Meantime, within his closed sanctum Livingstone still sat with intent gaze, poring over the page of figures before him. The expression on his face was one of profound satisfaction. He had at last reached the acme of his ambition--that is, of his later ambition. (He had once had other aims.) He had arrived at the point towards which he had been straining for the last eight--ten--fifteen years--he did not try to remember just how long--it had been a good while. He had at length accumulated, "on the most conservative estimate" (he framed the phrase in his mind, following the habit of his Boards)--he had no need to look now at the page before him: the seven figures that formed the balance, as he thought of them, suddenly appeared before him in facsimile. He had been gazing at them so steadily that now even when he shut his eyes he could see them clearly. It gave him a little glow about his heart;--it was quite convenient: he could always see them. It was a great sum. He had attained his ambition. Last year when he balanced his books at the close of the year, he had been worth only--a sum expressed in six figures, even when he put his securities at their full value. Now it could only be written in seven figures, "on the most conservative estimate." Yes, he had reached the top. He could walk up the street now and look any man in the face, or turn his back on him, just as he chose. The thought pleased him. Years ago, a friend--an old friend of his youth, Harry Trelane, had asked him to come down to the country to visit him and meet his children and see the peach trees bloom. He had pleaded business, and his friend had asked him gravely why he kept on working so hard when he was already so well off. He wanted to be rich, he had replied. "But you are already rich--you must be worth half a million? and you are a single man, with no children to leave it to." "Yes, but I mean to be worth double that." "Why?" "Oh!--so that I can tell any man I choose to go to the d---l," he had said half jestingly, being rather put to it by his friend's earnestness. His friend had laughed too, he remembered, but not heartily. "Well, that is not much of a satisfaction after all," he had said; "the real satisfaction is in helping him the other way;"--and this Livingstone remembered he had said very earnestly. Livingstone now had reached this point of his aspiration--he could tell any man he chose "to go to the devil." His content over this reflection was shadowed only by a momentary recollection that Henry Trelane was since dead. He regretted that his friend could not know of his success.