However, I had not the least doubt in my mind about winning success both with her and with that even more jealous Mistress--The Law. In fact, I quite meant to revolutionize things by the meteoric character of my career. I started out well. I took a good office fronting on the street in one of the best office-buildings--an extravagance I could not afford. Peck had a little dark hole on the other side of the hall. He made a half proposal to share my office with me, but I could not stand that. I, however, told him that he was welcome to use my office and books as much as he pleased, and he soon made himself so much at home in my office that I think he rather fell into the habit of thinking my clients his own. Before I knew many people I worked hard; read law and a great deal of other literature. But this did not last long, for I was social and made acquaintances easily. Moreover, I soon began to get cases; though they were too small to satisfy me--quite below my abilities, I thought. So, unless they promised me a chance of speaking before a jury, I turned them over to Peck, who would bone at them and work like a horse, though I often had to hunt up the law for him, a labor I never knew him to acknowledge. At first I used to correspond with both John Marvel and Wolffert; but gradually I left their letters unanswered. John, who had gone West, was too full of his country parish to interest me, and Wolffert's abstractions were too altruistic for me. Meantime, I was getting on swimmingly. I was taken into the best social set in the city, and was soon quite a favorite among them. I was made a member of all the germans as well as of the best club in town; was welcomed in the poker-game of "the best fellows" in town, and was invited out so much that I really had no time to do much else than enjoy my social success. But the chief of the many infallible proofs I had was my restoration to Lilian Poole's favor. Since I was become a sort of toast with those whose opinion she valued highly, she was more cordial to me than ever, and I was ready enough to let by-gones be by-gones and dangle around the handsomest girl in the State, daughter of a man who was president of a big bank and director of a half-dozen corporations. I was with her a great deal. In fact, before my second winter was out, my name was coupled with hers by all of our set and many not in our set. And about three evenings every week I was to be found basking in her somewhat steady smile, either at some dance or other social entertainment; strolling with her in the dusk on our way home from the fashionable promenade of ---- Street--which, for some reason, she always liked, though I would often have preferred some quieter walk--or lounging on her plush-covered sofa in her back drawing-room. I should have liked it better had Peck taken the hint that most of my other friends had taken and kept away from her house on those evenings which