"Quite true! But the pawn has a better chance of life, if the moves are considered calmly, than if played at random; it is then inevitably lost." "You're right," she said, seating herself on a grassy bank near by: "perfectly right. Let us talk this matter over calmly. I shan't forget myself again." He seated himself beside her. "Now frankly," she continued, "before you saw me, or spoke to me, you'd made up your mind to save your friend from my clutches, had you not? I beg your pardon--doubtless, you'd disapprove of such an expression--we'll say, you had determined to prevent him from marrying me." "Frankly speaking, yes, I had." "But you knew nothing about me; you could know nothing about me, except on hearsay." "Pardon me--I knew your late father, and I was at Colonel Belleston's, when you ran off with his heir-apparent, and were not found till half the country-side had been searched, and the dinner quite spoiled." "But Georgie Belleston was only eight, and I scarcely twelve. We had determined, I remember, to join a circus--no, he wanted to fight Indians; but it was childish nonsense." "The spirit was there, nevertheless. But in the present case I was considering Mr. Stanley, I must confess, rather than yourself. The world, my dear young lady, is an open market, a prosaic, mercantile world." "Don't you suppose I know that?" "I'm willing to believe it if you wish me to do so. It will help us to understand the commonsense proposition that marriageable young men, like cabbages, have a market value, and that a young man like our friend, who has a great deal to offer, should--shall I be perfectly plain, and say--should expect a pretty handsome return for himself." "And you didn't think that I'd much to offer," she said, laughing. "In other words, that you'd be selling your cabbages very cheap. Eh?" Kent-Lauriston said nothing, but she saw the impression she had produced, and bit her lips in mortified rage. She wished at least to win this man's respect, and she was showing herself to him in her very worst light. "I had, as you say," she continued, "nothing to offer Mr. Stanley but my love; but I dare say you don't believe in love, Mr. Kent-Lauriston." "Not believe in love? My dear young lady, it forms the basis of every possible marriage." "Does it never form the _whole_ of such a union?" "Only too often, but these are the impossible marriages, and ninety-nine per cent. of them prove failures, or worse." "I can't believe you--if one loves, nothing else counts." "Quite true for the time being, but God help the man or woman who mistakes the passion aroused by a pretty face or form for the real lasting article, and wagers his life on it." "You've never married; you can, therefore, talk as you please." "My dear Miss Fitzgerald, if I'd ever married, I should probably not talk at all." "You don't regard our affair as serious?" "Not on Mr. Stanley's side?" "And on mine?"