The Marchese Ludovico pressed on faster than the old lawyer could keep up with him, and was very unmistakably anxious about the object of his quest, and the tidings which he should be able to hear at the gate.
Signor Fortini had apparently got some other and newly-conceived thought in his mind.

He looked two or three times shrewdly and furtively into the face of the young Marchese; and closely compressed his thin lips together, and drew into a knot the shaggy eye-brows over his clear and thoughtful eyes.

Some notion had been suggested to his mind which very plainly he did not like.
At the gate nothing had been seen of the object of their search.

The octroi officers perfectly well remembered seeing the Marchese Ludovico, who was well known to them by sight, drive through the gate very early that morning in a bagarino with a lady.

One man had recognised the lady as the prima donna at the opera.