"What things?"
"Either to disappear from honourable society and begin life somewhere else, or else to make an end of myself. And she will do it. I have felt for more than a year that she means to ruin me."
Lamberti set his teeth, and stared at the stone-pine. If Guido had not been just the man he was, sensitive to morbidness where his honour was concerned, the situation might have seemed less desperate. If his aunt, her Serene Highness the Princess Anatolie, had not been a monster of avarice, selfishness, and vindictiveness, there would perhaps have been some hope of moving her. As it was, matters looked ill, and to make them worse there was the well-known fact that Guido had formerly played high and had lost considerable sums at cards. It would be easy to make society believe that he had paid his debts, which had always been promptly settled, with money which the Princess had intrusted to him for investment.
"What possible object can she have in ruining you?" asked Lamberti, presently.
"I cannot guess," Guido answered after another short pause. "I have little enough left as it is, except the bare chance of inheriting something, some day, from my brother, who likes me about as much as my aunt does, and is not bound to leave me a penny."
"But, after all," argued Lamberti, "you are the only heir left to either of them."
"I suppose so," assented Guido in an uncertain tone.
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing—it does not matter. Of course," he continued quietly, "this may go on for some time, but it can only end in one way, sooner or later. I shall be lucky if I am only reduced to starvation."
"You might marry an heiress," suggested Lamberti, as a last resource.