Her white hand was clenched, and her eyes were on fire.

Ah, if she could only find that woman he loved! if she could only see her dead--dead with Giovanni Saracinesca there upon the floor before her! As she thought of it, she stamped her foot upon the thick carpet, and her face grew paler.

She did not know what it was that she felt, but it completely overmastered her.
Padre Filippo would be pleased, she thought, for she knew how in that moment she hated Giovanni Saracinesca.
With a sudden impulse she again sat down and opened the letter next to her hand.

It was a gossiping epistle from a friend in Paris, full of stories of the day, exclamations upon fashion and all kinds of emptiness; she was about to throw it down impatiently and take up the next when her eyes caught Giovanni's name.
"Of course it is not true that Saracinesca is to marry Madame Mayer..." were the words she read.

But that was all.