"I will explain. You must know that Madame, for all her riches, is as ignorant as a child about money affairs. She doesn't understand a thing about banking, stocks, shares, book-keeping, and so forth, and naturally has to put herself entirely into the hands of some person who acts for her, and to accept all propositions and all results of operations without any control. The Cavaliere R—— has been serving her in this way for many years, and no doubt at first he was perfectly scrupulous in his operations and in the statement of accounts. But presently, aware that she knew nothing whatever about these affairs and accepted with her eyes shut whatever he chose to say, he thought he might profit without even risk of being found out. Marianna, however, has been observing for some time that the proceeds of the speculations have kept continually diminishing, which the Cavaliere accounted for by the special conditions of the money market, by monetary crises, by the rupture of commercial contracts, by the war, etc. At her instigation, Madame made me the proposition I told you of. Well, as she pressed me, I accepted the job, and told her to put me in full possession of some recent transaction that I might verify it. Next morning Madame sent me one of his statements, on which I read, among other things—
"'Exchange of 10000.00 marks, at 123.20 lire; acquired 8 shares of Acqua Marcia at 1465.00 lire.'
"I consulted at the office the prices on the Exchange reported in the Gazzetta Ufficiale and found it was different from what he had put down. Not satisfied with this, at lunch-time I went to the Chamber of Commerce and got a list of the Exchanges of the preceding day, and made certain of the difference I had already made out: the Berlin Exchange was at 123.37 lire, and the shares of Acqua Marcia were quoted at 1460.00 lire. Consequently, Cavaliere R—— had put 57 lire into his own pocket. Then I made Madame give me all his statements up to the end of June, which she had kept mixed up with her private letters and newspapers. By the help of the bulletins of the Exchange and other publications which I got through a stock-broker I know, I proved that in these operations alone the man had made a profit of 137.45 lire."
"And then?"
"Oh, then Madame thanked me very warmly and said she'd take the opportunity of her going away to relieve the Cavaliere of his services, and on her return would ask me to undertake the speculating. She left home on the 12th, and has given me a whole lot of matters to disentangle before her return. I must look up my German a bit, for she has no end of business with Germany."
Instinctively, Regina took her hand away from Antonio's, and said—
"Well?"
"Well?" repeated Antonio.
"How much is she to pay you?"