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From time to time he risked a careless, half-jesting declaration such as
many a woman might have taken seriously. But Maria Consuelo turned such
advances with a laugh or by an answer that was admirably tempered with
quiet dignity and friendly rebuke.
"If she is not good," he said to himself at last, "she must be
enormously clever. She must be one or the other."


CHAPTER IX.

Orsino's twenty-first birthday fell in the latter part of January, when
the Roman season was at its height, but as the young man's majority did
not bring him any of those sudden changes in position which make epochs
in the lives of fatherless sons, the event was considered as a family
matter and no great social celebration of it was contemplated. It
chanced, too, that the day of the week was the one appropriated by the
Montevarchi for their weekly dance, with which it would have been a
mistake to interfere. The old Prince Saracinesca, however, insisted that
a score of old friends should be asked to dinner, to drink the health of
his eldest grandson, and this was accordingly done.


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