The cynic was answered by a practical woman of the world, who said that
Corbario had six years of luxury and extravagance before him, and that
many men would have sold themselves to the devil for less. After the six
years the deluge might come if it must; it was much pleasanter to drown
in the end than never to have had the chance of swimming in the big
stream at all, and bumping sides with the really big fish, and feeling
oneself as good as any of them. Besides, Marcello was pale and thin, and
had been heard to cough; he might die before he came of age. The only
objection to this theory was that it was based on a fiction; for the
whole fortune had been left to the Signora by a childless relation.

These amiable and interesting views were expressed with variations by
people who knew the three persons concerned, and with such a keen sense
of appropriate time and place as made it quite sure that none of the
three should ever know what was said of them. The caution of an old fox
is rash temerity compared with the circumspection of a first-rate
gossip; and when the gossips were tired of discussing Folco Corbario and
his wife and her son, they talked about other matters, but they had a
vague suspicion that they had been cheated out of something. A cat that
has clawed all the feathers off a stuffed canary might feel just what
they did.

For nothing happened. Corbario did not launch into wild extravagance
after all, but behaved himself with the faultless dulness of a model
middle-aged husband. His wife loved him and was perfectly happy, and
happiness finally stole her superfluous years away, and they evaporated
in the sunshine, and she forgot all about them. Marcello Consalvi, who
had lost his father when he was a mere child, found a friend in his
mother's husband, and became very fond of him, and thought him a good
man to imitate; and in return Corbario made a companion of the