This was the first of several meetings, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of Mrs. Harlan, to whom he later introduced her. She had frankly told him that first day that her father would never consent to allow him to come to their home, and he had been well content to meet her in places where less restraint was necessary. To his great surprise, however, he found Lola much better able to protect herself than he had expected. She was what Mrs. Harlan described, after the first time she met her, as "a mighty smooth proposition," and although he knew himself by this time to be madly in love with her, he could not flatter himself with the hope that she was in the very least inclined to allow him to make a fool of her. Mrs. Harlan in fact did not hesitate to inform him that he was the one who was playing the fool. She rather coarsely described the affair as "a ten to one shot against him." "Why don't you hurry up that divorce and marry the girl?" she demanded of him on the afternoon on which Lola had made the appointment to meet him. "You are crazy about her, and it's the only way she'll ever listen to you. If you don't look out she'll marry that young bank clerk and leave you flat." "I doubt it," replied Dick, sulkily. "John Dorris is one of those nice boys, like you read about, and the way Lola is coming on lately he wouldn't have speed enough to keep up with her. She may marry him, I don't say she won't, but if she does God help him." "That's all right, too," replied his friend, "but she's too smart to make a fool of herself over a married man like you. She'll let you run her around in your car and buy her a few nice little presents, but just as you think she's going to fall into your arms, she's going to step back and give you the laugh. I may be a fool, but that's the way it looks to me." It was about the way it looked to him also, but he did not think it necessary to inform her of the fact, so to change the subject, and to kill time until the three o'clock appointment, he proposed lunching at Rector's, and she agreeing, they drove there in his car, and he, contrary to his usual custom, drank far more than was good for him. Lola herself found time hanging heavily on her hands, and wandered aimlessly about the apartment waiting for her father and Dr. Crossett to return. Maria came to her at last, holding in her hand several letters, all but one of which she placed upon the table. "Is that one for father?" said Lola, seeing her about to leave the room with one letter in her hand. "No, Miss. It's for me." She hesitated for a moment, then went on shyly. "It's from Mr. Barnes!" "Oh," remarked Lola curiously, "I thought he had stopped writing to you." "No, Miss." "Can you read them yourself now?" "I try to," replied Maria; "I manage to spell 'em out somehow." "Why don't you ask me to read them for you?"