To Orsino's mind
the very fact that it had been questioned at all demonstrated
sufficiently a carelessness on her own part which could only proceed
from the certainty of possessing that right beyond dispute. It would
doubtless have been possible for her to provide herself from the first
with something in the nature of a guarantee for her identity. She could
surely have had the means, through some friend of her own elsewhere, of
making the acquaintance of some one in society, who would have vouched
for her and silenced the carelessly spiteful talk concerning her which
had gone the rounds when she first appeared. But she had seemed to be
quite indifferent. She had refused Orsino's pressing offer to bring her
into relations with his mother, whose influence would have been enough
to straighten a reputation far more doubtful than Maria Consuelo's, and
she had almost wilfully thrown herself into a sort of intimacy with the
Countess Del Ferice.
But Orsino, as he thought of these matters, saw how futile such
arguments must seem to his own people, and how absurdly inadequate they
were to better his own state of mind, since he needed no conviction
himself but sought the means of convincing others.
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