“Me?  Why do you say me?  Us both.”

“I will work for my living,” said Giovanni, quietly.  “I am young.  I will not live on my wife.”

“It is absurd!” exclaimed the prince.  “It is Quixotic.  San Giacinto has plenty of money without ruining us.  Even if he finds it out I will fight the case to the end.  I am master here, as my father and my father’s father were before me, and I will not give up what is mine without a struggle.  Besides, who assures us that he is really what he represents himself to be?  What proves that he is really the descendant of that same Leone?”

“For that matter,” answered Giovanni, “he will have to produce very positive proofs, valid in law, to show that he is really the man.  I will give up everything to the lawful heir, but I will certainly not turn beggar to please an adventurer.  But I say that, if San Giacinto represents the elder branch of our house, we have no right here.  If I were sure of it I would not sleep another night under this roof.”

The old man could not withhold his admiration.  There was something supremely noble and generous about Giovanni’s readiness to sacrifice everything for justice which made his old heart beat with a strange pride.  If he was reluctant to renounce his rights it was after all more on Giovanni’s account, and for the sake of Corona and little Orsino.  He himself was an old man and had lived most of his life out already.

“You have your mother’s heart, Giovannino,” he said simply, but there was a slight moisture in his eyes, which few emotions had ever had the power to bring there.

“It is not a question of heart,” replied Giovanni.  “We cannot keep what does not belong to us.”

“We will let the law decide what we can keep.  Do you realise what it would be like, what a position we should occupy if we were suddenly declared beggars?  We should be absolute paupers.  We do not own a foot of land, a handful of money that does not come under the provisions of that accursed clause.”

“Wait a minute,” exclaimed Giovanni, suddenly recollecting that he possessed something of his own, a fact he had wholly forgotten in the excitement of his discovery.  “We shall not be wholly without resources.  It does not follow from this deed that we must give to San Giacinto any of the property our branch of the family has acquired by marriage, from your great grandfather’s time to this.  It must be very considerable.  To begin with me, my fortune came from my mother.  Then there was your mother, and your father’s mother, and so on.  San Giacinto has no claim to anything not originally the property of the old Leone who made this deed.”

“That is true,” replied the prince, more hopefully.  “It is not so bad as it looked.  You must be right about that point.”

“Unless the courts decide that San Giacinto is entitled to compensation and interest, because four generations have been kept out of the property.”