The proposal was instantly complied with, and the gentlemen adjourned to another room, where Maria was present, and did the honours of her tea-table. When this business was dispatched, she produced the chess-board, and offered a challenge, which Major Wilson gallantly accepted. Parties, that devote themselves to that dull monopolizing game, seem for a time to be so absolutely excluded from society, and so wedded to their own manœuvres, that it is perfectly fair and lawful to consider them as absentees, and accordingly the gentlemen, who were at liberty to follow their own amusements, walked out to enjoy the breeze, that every evening visits the banks of the Tagus from the northward, and qualifies the else insufferable heat. It was some time before the contending parties perceived that they had no spectators, and not even a solitary second to appeal to in a case of controversy, if such had arisen, or should arise, in the course of their engagement. You are too strong for me, said Maria, and as I cannot make any impression on your defences, I give up the contest. You are absolutely a professor, and I am a mere novice, more fit to be your disciple than your antagonist: besides, you mask your game, whilst I lay myself open to you, and (which is more provoking still) when you have me in your power, and might check-mate me by a single move, you always mischievously contrive to leave some loop-hole for me to escape, on purpose to postpone a victory, which you are indifferent about securing and seem to consider as below your notice. If I do this, he said, I’m sure you cannot seriously suppose my reasons to be those, which you assign. Could you not find some motive for my hesitation more natural, and less impossible, than indifference? May not the consciousness of what I am, instruct me almost to distrust my senses, though the divinity, whom I adore, should condescend to me her humble worshipper with looks so gracious, kindness so alluring, as seem to say--Approach me, and be blest?--but how to approach, when I compute the distance, that throws me off, and awes me from the attempt, is indeed a question, that staggers and confounds me.