I do not speak of poor Contini. He
is making a reputation, it is true, and Del Ferice gives him
something which I increase as much as I can. Considering our
positions, he is the more completely sacrificed of the two, poor
fellow--and through my fault. If I had only had the courage to put
my vanity out of the way eighteen months ago, I might have saved
him as well as myself. I believed myself a match for Del
Ferice--and I neither was nor ever shall be. I am a little
desperate.
"That is my life, my dear friend. Since you have not quite
forgotten me, write me a word of that good old sympathy on which I
lived so long. It may soon be all I have to live on. If Del Ferice
should have the bad taste to follow Donna Tullia to Saint
Lawrence's, nothing could save me. I should no longer have the
alternative of remaining his slave in exchange for safety from
bankruptcy to myself and ruin--or something like it--to my father.
"But let us talk no more about it all.
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