Just as if it really mattered whether you have raised your fingers from a man or no!' Knight smiled as pitilessly as before, and they went on in silence.
'Checkmate,' said Knight.
'Another game,' said Elfride peremptorily, and looking very warm.
'With all my heart,' said Knight.
'Checkmate,' said Knight again at the end of forty minutes.
'Another game,' she returned resolutely.
'I'll give you the odds of a bishop,' Knight said to her kindly.
'No, thank you,' Elfride replied in a tone intended for courteous indifference; but, as a fact, very cavalier indeed.
'Checkmate,' said her opponent without the least emotion.
Oh, the difference between Elfride's condition of mind now, and when she purposely made blunders that Stephen Smith might win! It was bedtime.

Her mind as distracted as if it would throb itself out of her head, she went off to her chamber, full of mortification at being beaten time after time when she herself was the aggressor.

Having for two or three years enjoyed the reputation throughout the globe of her father's brain--which almost constituted her entire world--of being an excellent player, this fiasco was intolerable; for unfortunately the person most dogged in the belief in a false reputation is always that one, the possessor, who has the best means of knowing that it is not true.
In bed no sleep came to soothe her; that gentle thing being the very middle-of-summer friend in this respect of flying away at the merest troublous cloud.

After lying awake till two o'clock an idea seemed to strike her.

She softly arose, got a light, and fetched a Chess Praxis from the library.