"Yes, father, do not be angry with me. I love him dearly. Oh, do not spurn me from you, but I love him with my whole heart and soul, and I shall never marry any other man but him." The poor little girl burst into a paroxysm of weeping. "Then you _will_ marry him?" gasped the millionaire. "No, father," she sobbed solemnly, "that is an illegitimate deduction from my proposition. He is the one man on this earth I could never bring myself to marry." "You are mad!" "No, father. I am only mathematical. I will never marry a man who does not love me. And don't you see that, as I love him, the odds are that he doesn't love me?" "But he tells me he does!" "What is his bare assertion--weighed against the doctrine of probability! How many girls do you suppose Silverdale has met in his varied career?" "A thousand, I dare say." "Ah, that's only reckoning English Society (and theatres). And then he has seen Society (and theatres) in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Boston, a hundred places! If we put the figure at three thousand it will be moderate. Here am I, a single girl----" "Who oughtn't to remain so," growled the millionaire. "One single girl. How wildly improbable that out of three thousand girls, Silverdale should just fall in love with me. It is 2999 to 1 against. Then there is the probability that he is not in love at all--which makes the odds 5999 to 1. The problem is exactly analogous to one which you will find in any Algebra. Out of a sack containing three thousand coins, what are the odds that a man will draw the one marked coin?" "The comparison of yourself to a marked coin is correct enough," said the millionaire, thinking of the files of fortune-hunters to whom he had given the sack. "Otherwise you are talking nonsense." "Then Pascal, Laplace, Lagrange, De Moivre talked nonsense," said Lillie hotly; "but I have not finished. We must also leave open the possibility that the man will not be tempted to draw out any coin whatsoever. The odds against the marked coin being drawn out are thus 5999 to 1. The odds against Silverdale returning my affection are 6000 to 1. As Butler rightly points out, probability is the only guide to conduct, which is, we know from Matthew Arnold, three-fourths of life. Am I to risk ruining three-fourths of my life, in defiance of the unerring dogmas of the Doctrine of Chances? No, father, do not exact this sacrifice from me. Ask me anything you please, and I will grant it--oh! so gladly--but do not, oh, do not ask me to marry the man I love!" The millionaire stroked her hair, and soothed her in piteous silence. He had made his pile in pig-iron, and had not science enough to grapple with the situation. "Do you mean to say," he said at last, "that because you love a man, he can't love you?"