The tolerably
harmless dissipation and wildness of the two or three years he had spent
in England could not account for such a period of coldness as followed
his separation from Maria Consuelo. He had by no means exhausted the
pleasures of life and his capacity for enjoyment could not even be said
to have reached its height. But he avoided the society of women even
more consistently than he shunned the club and the card table.
More than a year had gone by since he had heard from Maria Consuelo. He
met Spicca from time to time, looking now as though he had not a day to
live, but neither of them mentioned past events. The Romans had talked a
little of her sudden change of plans, for it had been known that she had
begun to furnish a large apartment for the winter of the previous year,
and had then very unaccountably changed her mind and left the place in
the hands of an agent to be sub-let. People said she had lost her
fortune. Then she had been forgotten in the general disaster that
followed, and no one had taken the trouble to remember her since then.
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