She drew back on the lounge, raised herself a little and turned her face to him. Again, as his eyes met hers, he leaned forward quickly, as though he would leave his seat. But she checked him, by an imperative glance and a gesture. He was unreasonable and had no right to be annoyed, but something in her manner chilled him and pained him in a way he could not have explained. When he spoke there was a shade of change in the tone of his voice.
"The things you have told me do not influence me in the least," he said with more calmness than he had yet shown. "What you believe to be the most important reason is no reason at all to me. You are Count Spicca's daughter. He is an old friend of my father—not that it matters very materially, but it may make everything easier. I will go to him to-day and tell him that I wish to marry you—"
"You will not do that!" exclaimed Maria Consuelo in a tone of alarm.
"Yes, I will. Why not? Do you know what he once said to me? He told me he wished we might take a fancy to each other, because, as he expressed it, we should be so well matched."
"Did he say that?" asked Maria Consuelo gravely.
"That or something to the same effect. Are you surprised? What surprises me is that I should never have guessed the relation between you. Now your father is a very honourable man. What he said meant something, and when he said it he meant that our marriage would seem natural to him and to everybody. I will go and talk to him. So much for your great reason. As for the second you gave, it is absurd. We are of the same age, to all intents and purposes."
"I am not twenty-three years old."
"And I am not quite two and twenty. Is that a difference? So much for that. Take the third, which you put first. Seriously, do you think that any intelligent being would consider you bound by such a promise? Do you mean to say that a young girl—you were nothing more—has a right to throw away her life out of sentiment by making a promise of that kind? And to whom? To a man who is not her husband, and never can be, because he is dying. To a man just not indifferent to her, to a man—"
Maria Consuelo raised herself and looked full at Orsino. Her face was extremely pale and her eyes were suddenly dark and gleamed.
"Don Orsino, you have no right to talk to me in that way. I loved him—no one knows how I loved him!"