‘Not your opinion of the garden, my dear, but your opinion of Schmidt.’
‘Oh!’ Maria was very much surprised. ‘But why? I told you in Rome that I thought him an excellent person and very intelligent!’
‘Did it ever occur to you that he might be too intelligent?’
‘No. But perhaps I don’t understand just what you mean. Do you think he is educated above his station? Too good for his place?’
‘Not at all. But sometimes, in money dealings and positions of trust, a man may be too clever. That is what I mean.’
‘You mean that you don’t quite trust him,’ said Maria, ‘and you wish me to form a judgment of him.’
‘I want your opinion,’ answered Montalto, who was at odds with his over-sensitive conscience. ‘I should be very unjust to Schmidt if I were to say that he may not be quite honest. It would be very wrong to assume such a thing of any one, would it not?’
‘If you had no grounds for suspicion, yes. But even an instinctive distrust of a man of business is enough reason for not giving him the entire control of a large estate.’
‘Do you really think so, my dear? You see, the men of his family have been our stewards for some little time.’
‘He told me they had served you two hundred years.’