last move. If it comes out right I shall be richer than ever; if not I
must begin all over again."

Lady Lawless looked at him curiously. She had never met a man like him
before. His power seemed almost Napoleonic; his imperturbability was
absolute. Yet she noticed something new in him. On one side a kind of
grim forcefulness; on the other, a quiet sort of human sympathy. The one,
no doubt, had to do with the momentous circumstances amid which he was
placed; the other, with an event which she had, perhaps prematurely,
anticipated.

"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."