"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 a propos_!" 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." "Ah! was it at a tea-party, when some of your friends got on the wrong side of the table ?" "What can you expect of fools like Detchard and De Gautet?
I wish I'd been there." "And the duke interferes ?" "Well," said Rupert meditatively, "that's hardly a fair way of putting it, perhaps.

I want to interfere." "And she prefers the duke ?" "Ay, the silly creature! Ah, well, you think about my plan," and, with a bow, he pricked his horse and trotted after the body of his friend.
I went back to Flavia and Sapt, pondering on the strangeness of the man.
Wicked men I have known in plenty, but Rupert Hentzau remains unique in my experience.

And if there be another anywhere, let him be caught and hanged out of hand.