"There's stuff in you after all.
Upon my word, I was afraid you were going to turn virtuous." I laughed as wickedly as I could.
"And what are you going to get out of it ?" he said.

"I suppose that's coming next ?" As the reader knows, I wasn't going to get anything out of it, except myself and the signorina.

But it wouldn't do to tell the colonel that; he would not believe in disinterested conduct.

So I bargained with him for a _douceur_ of thirty thousand dollars, which he promised so readily that I strongly doubted whether he ever meant to pay it.
"Do you think there's any danger of Whittingham making an attack while we're engaged in the job ?" The colonel was, in common parlance, getting rather _warmer_ than I liked.
It was necessary to mislead him.
"I don't think so," I replied.

"He can't possibly have organized much of a party here yet.