"No. But this thing is very strange."
"Do not keep me waiting—it hurts me!"
"The woman stopped me as I was going away. I had never spoken to her. She knew my name. She told me that you were—how shall I say?—mentally deranged."
Maria Consuelo started and turned very pale.
"She told you that I was mad?" Her voice sank to a whisper.
"That is what she said."
Orsino watched her narrowly. She evidently believed him. Then she sank back in her chair with a stifled cry of horror, covering her eyes with her hands.
"And you might have believed it!" she exclaimed. "You might really have believed it—you!"
The cry came from her heart and would have shown Orsino what weight she still attached to his opinion had he not himself been too suddenly and deeply interested in the principal question to pay attention to details.
"She made the statement very clearly," he said. "What could have been her object in the lie?"