“I wonder—I wonder at you,” she said. “How do you keep so cool while such tremendous things are happening?”
“Because I believe in myself, Lady Lawless. I have had to take my measure a good many times in this world. I never was defeated through my own stupidity. It has been the sheer luck of the game.”
“You do not look like a gamester,” she said.
“I guess it’s all pretty much a game in life, if you look at it right. It is only a case of playing fair or foul.”
“I never heard any Englishmen talk as you do.”
“Very likely not,” he responded. “I don’t want to be unpleasant; but most Englishmen work things out by the rule their fathers taught them, and not by native ingenuity. It is native wit that tells in the end, I’m thinking.”
“Perhaps you are right,” she rejoined. “There must be a kind of genius in it.” Here her voice dropped a little lower. “I do not believe there are many Englishmen, even if they had your dollars—”
“The dollars I had this morning,” he interposed.
“—who could have so strongly impressed Gracia Raglan.”
He looked thoughtfully on the ground; then raised his eyes to Lady Lawless, and said in a low, ringing tone: