It was a question, perhaps, of rendering a service to a woman in danger, whom he loved with all the feeling of which he was capable.
That woman was the mainspring of his social position in Rome.

She was still more.

A plan for Fanny's marriage, as yet secret, but on the point of being consummated, depended upon Madame Steno.

But he felt it impossible to attempt to render her any service before having spent half an hour in the rooms of the Palais Castagna, and he began to employ that half hour in a manner which would be most profitable to his possible purchases, for he turned to Madame Gorka and said to her, with the rather exaggerated politeness habitual to him: "Countess, if you will permit me to advise you, do not pause so long before these coffers, interesting as they may be.

First, as I have just told Dorsenne, Cavalier Fossati, the agent, has his spies everywhere here.