He went over all that had passed.  The position had never been an easy one, and the letter which Maria Consuelo had written to him after her departure had not made it easier.  It had contained the revelations concerning her birth, together with many references to Spicca’s continued cruelty, plentifully supported by statements of facts.  She had then distinctly told Orsino that she would never marry him, under any circumstances whatever, declaring that if he followed her she would not even see him.  She would not ruin his life and plunge him into a life long quarrel with his family, she said, and she added that she would certainly not expose herself to such treatment as she would undoubtedly receive at the hands of the Saracinesca if she married Orsino without his parents’ consent.

A man does not easily believe that he is deprived of what he most desires exclusively for his own good and welfare, and the last sentence quoted wounded Orsino deeply.  He believed himself ready to incur the displeasure of all his people for Maria Consuelo’s sake, and he said in his heart that if she loved him she should be ready to bear as much as he.  The language in which she expressed herself, too, was cold and almost incisive.

Unlike Spicca Orsino answered this letter, writing in an argumentative strain, bringing the best reasons he could find to bear against those she alleged, and at last reproaching her with not being willing to suffer for his sake a tenth part of what he would endure for her.  But he announced his intention of joining her before long, and expressed the certainty that she would receive him.

To this Maria Consuelo made no reply for some time.  When she wrote at last, it was to say that she had carefully considered her decision and saw no good cause for changing it.  To Orsino her tone seemed colder and more distant than ever.  The fact that the pages were blotted here and there and that the handwriting was unsteady, was probably to be referred to her carelessness.  He brooded over his misfortune, thought more than once of making a desperate effort to win back her love, and remained in Rome.  After a long interval he wrote to her again.  This time he produced an epistle which, under the circumstances, might have seemed almost ridiculous.  It was full of indifferent gossip about society, it contained a few sarcastic remarks about his own approaching failure, with some rather youthfully cynical observations on the instability of things in general and the hollowness of all aspirations whatsoever.

He received no answer, and duly repented the flippant tone he had taken.  He would have been greatly surprised could he have learned that this last letter was destined to produce a greater effect upon his life than all he had written before it.

In the meanwhile his father, who had heard of the increasing troubles in the world of business, wrote him in a constant strain of warning, to which he paid little attention.  His mother’s letters, too, betrayed her anxiety, but expressed what his father’s did not, to wit the most boundless confidence in his power to extricate himself honourably from all difficulties, together with the assurance that if worst came to worst she was always ready to help him.