Lanny stepped forward. He shook hands warmly, making Lucille's bracelets jingle like miniature cymbals, and Lucille exchanged a few words, half grave and half gay, taking his measure meanwhile--or thinking she was taking it, for she was a poor judge of individual character, however well she understood it in the gross. She liked the impressive. Henry Ward Beecher's hair meant more to her than Henry Ward Beecher's mind; she could never have understood a blithe statesman or one not in a frock coat. In time, not being an utter fool, she was apt to see through hollow impressiveness or to see real worth under unimpressive exteriors, but this came slowly. Her first impressions were usually wrong, as when she had misjudged Dominie Dean. In Lanny, standing in the illy lighted little hall, she saw nothing of the inner Lanny. She thought, “A male trifle; hardly worth serious consideration; a girl's first love material,” and felt she had him properly scheduled. “Your father is in the study?” she asked, and tapped on the study door lightly, not to injure the knuckles of her kid gloves. If David had not heard the light tap--which he did, knowing Lucille was in the hall--he would have heard her bracelets. He opened the door. We are apt to give men and women too much credit for pursuing a definite course. The hard heads that, at the beginning of a career, lay clean-cut plans of ambition are in an infinitesimal minority. With most ambition is not much more than a feeling of uneasiness, an oyster's mild irritation at the grain of sand that intrudes into the shell. Just as some forms of indigestion cause an inward uneasiness that urges the sufferer to eat and eat, regardless of what is eaten, and only seeking relief from what seems a pang of hunger--but is actually a pathologic condition--so the victim of ambition feeds on whatever comes to hand. Lucille was such a victim. When David opened the door of his study Lucille sailed in like a full-rigged ship, and seated herself at his desk. She opened her purse, and disgorged the roll of bank notes, which opened itself like something alive. She pushed the money to the edge of the desk. “You'll find that right,” she said, and dipped into her purse again. “This is the note, if you insist. I've left the time blank--shall I make it a year?” She picked up David's pen. “I think six months--” “It is to be just as you wish it,” she said, and inserted the time, and slid the note toward David, handing him the pen. He was standing, and he bent over the desk and signed his name. Lucille blotted it briskly, and put the note back in her purse. The money still remained where she had pushed it. She put it into David's hand. “There!” she exclaimed. “Now, no more worry!” “I can't tell you how I appreciate this, Mrs. Hardcome,” said David.