“Traps all there, Jaggs?”
“Yes, sir, everything,” said the man confidentially, “and oh! sir—”
“That will do. Say what you have to say when I return: I’m late. Take my card up to the Contessa,” he continued, turning sharply to the servant; and there was so much stern decision in his manner that the door was held wide, and the artist entered.
Meanwhile a few words passed in the drawing-room.
“Who’s that fellow, Tina?” said the man too small, in “The Emperor’s” estimation, for Iago.
The Contessa had sunk back in her lounge, and a listless, weary air had come over her face like a cloud, as she said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders—
“Mr Dale’s man.”
“Who the dickens is Mr Dale?”
Twenty years of life in London society had so thoroughly Anglicised Conte Cesare Dellatoria, that his conversation had become perfectly insular, and the Italian accent was only noticeable at times.
“You know—the artist whom we visited.”