"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."