“Isn’t that a hand to play?—a throne and your princess! And for me, say a competence and your Majesty’s gratitude.”
“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 àpropos!”
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.”