"
"Surely," I exclaimed, "while you're above ground, hell wants its
master!"
"Well, think it over," he said. "And, look you, it would take more than
a scruple or two to keep me from yonder girl," and his evil eye flashed
again at her I loved.
"Get out of my reach!" said I; and yet in a moment I began to laugh for
the very audacity of it.
"Would you turn against your master?" I asked.
He swore at Michael for being what the offspring of a legal, though
morganatic, union should not be called, and said to me in an almost
confidential and apparently friendly tone:
"He gets in my way, you know. He's a jealous brute! Faith, I nearly
stuck a knife into him last night; he came most cursedly mal a propos!"
My temper was well under control now; I was learning something.
"A lady?" I asked negligently.
"Ay, and a beauty," he nodded. "But you've seen her."
"Ah! was it at a tea-party, when some of your friends got on the wrong
side of the table?"
"What can you expect of fools like Detchard and De Gautet? I wish I'd
been there."
"And the duke interferes?"
"Well," said Rupert meditatively, "that's hardly a fair way of putting
it, perhaps. I want to interfere."
"And she prefers the duke?"
"Ay, the silly creature! Ah, well, you think about my plan," and, with a
bow, he pricked his horse and trotted after the body of his friend.
Pages:
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158