Who knows anything about it?
Take yourself, for instance; you've never been in love, you've everything that you can desire, you're clad in purple and fine linen, you fare sumptuously every day, you flirt six days in the week, and rest not on the seventh--but love! You don't know what it means; and if you do, you're far too wise in your generation to go in for such an uncomfortable emotion." Stafford smiled rather absently; he was scarcely listening; he was so accustomed to Howard's cynical diatribes that more often than not they made no more impression on him than water on a duck's back.

Besides, he was thinking of Ida Heron, the girl whose strange history he had just been listening to.
There was silence for a minute or two, and while they stood leaning against the door-way two men came out of another door in the inn and stood talking.

They were commercial travellers, and they were enjoying their pipes--of extremely strong tobacco--after a hard day's work.
Presently one of them said: "Seen that place of Sir Stephen Orme's on the hill?
Splendacious, isn't it?
Must have cost a small fortune.

I wonder what the old man's game is." The other man shook his head, and laughed.
"Of course he's up to some game.

He wouldn't lay out all that money for nothing, millionaire as he is.