He was annoyed at the words which had been so near his lips, for he had been on the point of saying "because I love you"—and he was intimately convinced that he did not love her. He could not in the least understand why the phrase was so ready to be spoken. Could it be, he asked himself, that Maria Consuelo was trying to make him say the words, and that her will, with her question, acted directly on his mind? He scouted the thought as soon as it presented itself, not only for its absurdity, but because it shocked some inner sensibility.
"What were you going to say?" asked Madame d'Aranjuez almost carelessly.
"Something that is best not said," he answered.
"Then I am glad you did not say it."
She spoke quietly and unaffectedly. It needed little divination on her part to guess what the words might have been. Even if she wished them spoken, she would not have them spoken too lightly, for she had heard his love speeches before, when they had meant very little.
Orsino suddenly turned the subject, as though he felt unsure of himself. He asked her about the result of her search, in the morning. She answered that she had determined to take the apartment in the Palazzo Barberini.
"I believe it is a very large place," observed Orsino, indifferently.
"Yes," she answered in the same tone. "I mean to receive this winter. But it will be a tiresome affair to furnish such a wilderness."
"I suppose you mean to establish yourself in Rome for several years." His face expressed a satisfaction of which he was hardly conscious himself. Maria Consuelo noticed it.
"You seem pleased," she said.