"Who is Pauline?" Trent asked, "the missus?"
"The Countess," Hentzi said with dignity, "is in perpetual retreat with the Ursuline sisters near Vienna."
"Is Pauline the daughter?"
"His daughters are married." Hentzi laughed, "Castle Radna is not a place where it is wise to ask questions. You think because his excellency was cheerful when you last saw him he is like that always? I tell you if Pauline has been unkind he may visit it on you. I prefer that he does. I am tired of his humours and you are younger and stronger."
"You don't mean he might hit me?" Trent cried.
Hentzi seemed to find Trent's anxious manner amusing.
"Most certainly he will," the secretary assured him, "but you need not be alarmed. He will fling you gold when his temper has spent itself."
"I'm not going to let any man strike me," Trent said doggedly. "It would raise the devil in me and I might be sorry for it."
"You would," Hentzi said thinking that the chauffeur meant he might lose his job.
Anthony Trent, instead, was thinking that he might, in order to succeed in his venture, have to submit to indignities that would be torture to one of his temperament. It would not be wise to let the secretary know this so he turned the subject to the woman who dare laugh when the count was angry.