Del Ferice's weakness was his unaccountable detestation of Giovanni Saracinesca; and he had so far suffered this abhorrence of the man to dominate his existence, that it had come to be one of his chiefest delights in life to thwart Giovanni wherever he could.

How it had begun, or when, he no longer knew nor cared.

He had perhaps thought Giovanni treated him superciliously, or even despised him; and his antagonism being roused by some fancied slight, he had shown a petty resentment, which, again, Saracinesca had treated with cold indifference.

Little by little his fancied grievance had acquired great proportions in his own estimation, and he had learned to hate Giovanni more than any man living.

At first it might have seemed an easy matter to ruin his adversary, or, at all event, to cause him great and serious injury; and but for that very indifference which Del Ferice so resented, his attempts might have been successful.
Giovanni belonged to a family who from the earliest times had been at swords-drawn with the Government.