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Updated: May 31, 2025
"You owe the bank a very large sum on these buildings, Don Orsino." "Secured by mortgages on them," answered the young man quietly, but preparing for trouble. "Just so. Secured by mortgages. But if the bank should foreclose within the next few months, and if the buildings do not realize the amount secured, Contini and Company are liable for the difference." "I know that."
But Contini chose to believe that a crisis was not far off. He possessed in a high degree that sort of caution which is valuable rather in an assistant than in a chief. Orsino was little inclined to share his architect's despondency for the present. "You need a change of air," he said, pushing a heap of papers away from him and lighting a cigarette.
"I shall not have any difficulty in getting money you know that. What I feel most is the moral failure." "What is the moral failure to me?" asked Contini gloomily. "It is all very well to talk of getting money. The bank will shut its tills like a steel trap and to-day is Saturday, and there are the workmen and others to be paid, and several bills due into the bargain.
He had lost Maria Consuelo, in whom he would have confided as he had often done before, and at the present important juncture he stood quite alone. He felt that he was no match for Del Ferice. The keen banker was making use of him for his own purposes in a way which neither Orsino nor Contini had ever suspected.
The time was past when Contini would gladly have accepted his partner's share of the undertaking, and would even have tried to raise funds to purchase it.
To Spicca, Orsino seemed indifferent, and the older man's reticence after his sudden outburst did not tend to prolong the meeting. Orsino went in search of Contini and explained what was needed of him. He was to make a brief list of desirable apartments to let and was to accompany Madame d'Aranjuez on the following morning in order to see them.
The great contract he had undertaken was almost finished, and he knew that within two months he would be placed in the same difficult position from which he had formerly so signally failed to extricate himself. That he and Contini had executed the terms of the contract with scrupulous and conscientious nicety did not better the position.
Andrea Contini was probably a man of superior talent, well able to have directed the whole affair alone, if other circumstances had been favourable to him, and there was on the whole nothing to prove that the two young men had received more than their fair share of assistance or accommodation from the bank.
Mariéjol suggests that the contini corresponded to the gentilshommes de la chambre at the French Court. Lucio Marineo Siculo mentioned these palatine dignitaries immediately after the two captains and the two hundred gentlemen composing the royal body-guard.
On the other hand he felt even more keenly than before all the pain of his sudden separation from Maria Consuelo. When a man is assailed, by several misfortunes at once, twenty-four hours are generally enough to sift the small from the great and to show him plainly which is the greatest of all. "What shall we do this morning?" inquired Contini.
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