The signora is in trouble--in terrible trouble." For a moment Rowland expected to hear that the signora's trouble was of a nature that a loan of five thousand francs would assuage.

But the Cavaliere continued: "Miss Light has committed a great crime; she has plunged a dagger into the heart of her mother." "A dagger!" cried Rowland.
The Cavaliere patted the air an instant with his finger-tips.

"I speak figuratively.

She has broken off her marriage." "Broken it off ?" "Short! She has turned the prince from the door." And the Cavaliere, when he had made this announcement, folded his arms and bent upon Rowland his intense, inscrutable gaze.

It seemed to Rowland that he detected in the polished depths of it a sort of fantastic gleam of irony or of triumph; but superficially, at least, Giacosa did nothing to discredit his character as a presumably sympathetic representative of Mrs.Light's affliction.
Rowland heard his news with a kind of fierce disgust; it seemed the sinister counterpart of Christina's preternatural mildness at Madame Grandoni's tea-party.