“Come, come, you 'll not pretend to say she is n't worth it, Ludlow, nor you 'll not affect to be indifferent to her.”
“I wish to Heaven I was indifferent to her; next to having never met her, it would be the best thing I know of,” said he, rising, and walking the room with hurried steps. “I tell you, Stocmar, if ever there was an evil destiny, I believe that woman to be mine. I don't think I love her, I cannot say to my own heart that I do, and yet there she is, mistress of my fate, to make me or mar me, just as she pleases.”
“Which means, simply, that you are madly in love with her,” said Stocmar.
“No such thing; I 'd do far more to injure than to serve her this minute. If I never closed my eyes last night, it was plotting how to overreach her,—how I should wreck her whole fortune in life, and leave her as destitute as I am myself.”
“The sentiment is certainly amiable,” said Stocmar, smiling.
“I make no pretence to generosity about her,” said Paten, sternly; “nor is it between men like you and myself fine sentiments are bandied.”
“Fine sentiments are one thing, master, an unreasonable antipathy is another,” said Stocmar. “And it would certainly be too hard if we were to pursue with our hatred every woman that could not love us.”
“She did love me once,—at least, she said so,” broke in Paten.
“Be grateful, therefore, for the past. I know I'd be very much her debtor for any show of present tenderness, and give it under my hand never to bear the slightest malice whenever it pleased her to change her mind.”
“By Heaven! Stocmar,” cried Paten, passionately, “I begin to believe you have been playing me false all this time, telling her all about me, and only thinking of how to advance your own interests with her.”