ndicate the business and professional
men now dancing within range of vision. "That's a fine career for a man,
isn't it! Lawyers, bankers, politicians! What do they get out of life,
I'd like to know! What do they ever know about real things? Where do
they ever get?"

He was so earnest that she was surprised and impressed. Evidently he
had deep-seated ambitions, for he seemed to speak with actual emotion
of these despised things which were so far beneath his planning for the
future. She had a vague, momentary vision of Pitt, at twenty-one, prime
minister of England; and she spoke, involuntarily in a lowered voice,
with deference:

"What do you want to be?" she asked.

George answered promptly.

"A yachtsman," he said.

Chapter VI

Having thus, in a word, revealed his ambition for a career above courts,
marts, and polling booths, George breathed more deeply than usual, and,
turning his face from the lovely companion whom he had just made his
confidant, gazed out at the dancers with an expression in which there
was both sternness and a contempt for the squalid lives of the unyachted
Midlanders before him. However, among them, he marked his mother; and
his sombre grandeur relaxed momentarily; a more genial light came into
his eyes.

Isabel was dancing with the queer-looking duck; and it was to be noted
that the lively gentleman's gait was more sedate than it had been with
Miss Fanny Minafer, but not less dexterous and authoritative. He was
talking to Isabel as gaily as he had talked to Miss Fanny, though with
less laughter, and Isabel listened and answered eagerly: her colour
was high and her eyes had a look of delight. She saw George and the
beautiful Lucy on the stairway, and nodded to them. George waved his
hand vaguely: he had a momentary return of that inexplicable uneasiness
and resentment which had troubled him downstairs.

"How lovely your mother is!" Lucy said

"I think she is," he agreed gently.

"She's the gracefulest woman in that ballroom. She dances like a girl of
sixteen."

"Most girls of sixteen," said George, "are bum dancers. Anyhow, I
wouldn't dance with one unless I had to."

"Well, you'd better dance with your mother! I never saw anybody
lovelier. How wonderfully they dance together!"

"Who?"

"Your mother and--and the queer-looking duck," said Lucy. "I'm going to
dance with him pretty soon."

"I don't care--so long as you don't give him one of the numbers that
belong to