"I feel the compliment."
"Remember, I like their money, only I object to its being encumbered."
"You are wonderfully frank, Mr. De Burgh."
"I dare say you said 'brutally frank' in your thoughts, Miss Liddell, and you are right. I am rather a bad lot, and a little too old to mend. But let it be a saving clause in your mind, if I ever recur to it, that the fact of your being nice enough for the governess impelled me to offer driving lessons to the heiress. Will you take the reins? You might hold them forever if you choose."
"Not yet, thank you—when we get out on the road again," returned Katherine, not seeing or seeming to see his covert meaning. "You are surely not a democrat?"
"A democrat? No. I have no particular view as regards politics; but if the devil ever got so completely the upper hand in this world as to leave it without a class to serve and obey us, their natural superiors, I'd decline to stay here any longer, and descend by the help of a bullet to lower regions, where I should have better society."
"More congenial society, I am sure," said Katherine, laughing, though revolted by his tone. She felt it would never do to show she was. "You are quite different from any one I ever met. Do you know, you give me the idea of a wicked Norman Baron in the Middle Ages."
De Burgh laughed, as if he rather enjoyed the observation. "I know," he said; "a regular melodramatic villain, 'away with him to the lowest dungeon beneath the castle moat' sort of fellow, who would draw a Jew's teeth before breakfast and roast a restive burgher after. I wonder, considering you possess the two strongest attractions for men of this description—money and (may I say it?) beauty—that you trust yourself with me."
"Ah! you concealed your vile opinions successfully; so you see I could not know my danger," returned Katherine, laughing. "You are not at all a modern man."
"I accept the compliment."