"Let us take it for granted that you will come back to us," said Orsino cheerfully.
"Very well, we will take it for granted. What then?"
The question was so sudden and direct that Orsino fancied there ought to be an evident answer to it.
"What then?" he repeated, after a moment's hesitation. "I suppose you will live in these same rooms again, and with your permission, a certain Orsino Saracinesca will visit you from time to time, and be rude, and be sent away into exile for his sins. And Madame d'Aranjuez will go a great deal to Madame Del Ferice's and to other ultra-White houses, which will prevent the said Orsino from meeting her in society. She will also be more beautiful than ever, and the daily papers will describe a certain number of gowns which she will bring with her from Paris, or Vienna, or London, or whatever great capital is the chosen official residence of her great dressmaker. And the world will not otherwise change very materially in the course of eight months."
Orsino laughed lightly, not at his own speech, which he had constructed rather clumsily under the spur of necessity, but in the hope that she would laugh, too, and begin to talk more carelessly. But Maria Consuelo was evidently not inclined for anything but the most serious view of the world, past, present and future.
"Yes," she answered gravely. "I daresay you are right. One comes, one shows one's clothes, and one goes away again—and that is all. It would be very much the same if one did not come. It is a great mistake to think oneself necessary to any one. Only things are necessary—food, money and something to talk about."
"You might add friends to the list," said Orsino, who was afraid of being called brutal again if he did not make some mild remonstrance to such a sweeping assertion.
"Friends are included under the head of 'something to talk about,'" answered Maria Consuelo.
"That is an encouraging view."
"Like all views one gets by experience."