_you_ a woman-hater?" I laughingly asked,
notwithstanding my annoyance.

"Oh, no," he suddenly replied; "but I had a friend who once suffered
from very much the same sort of a woman as this Mrs. Winslow, and she
was not eighteen years old either. But to resume: Get this point in her
life, and the rest--hem!--the rest reads right on like the chapters of a
book!"

"And then what?" I ventured to ask.

"Then what?" he asked indignantly; "go for her through the newspapers.
Drive her out of the country. Make it impossible for her to ever
return;" and then, as if reflecting, "ruin her altogether. Any reporter
will listen to you if you have anybody to ruin! In fact, get up an
excitement about it and show her up."

"And try your case in the newspapers instead of in the courts?" I added,
"which would have the effect of leaving the matter at the end just where
it was at the beginning, with nothing proven, and Mr. Lyon still at the
mercy of any future surprise the woman might conceive a fancy of
springing upon him."

But there was no means of changing this lofty gentleman's opinions, and
these interviews were always necessarily closed by the threat on my part
that I would have nothing further to do with the matter if I was not
allowed to conduct my operations according to my own judgment in the
light of my own large experience upon such matters, and Mr. Harcout
would depart in a most dignified and frigid manner, as though it were a
"positively last appearance," only to return the next day with more
objections and a new batch of suggestions, which were given me for
"what they were worth," as he would remark, and we would fight our
battles all over again, with the stereotyped result.

I saw Mr. Lyon very seldom, and he always approached me in the timid,
reluctant way in which he had come into my office when the case was
first begun; but, contrary to what I had anticipated through Harcout's
injunctions to "push things" and crush the woman out, he approved of my
course throughout, and seemed wonderfully pleased that everything had
been conducted so quietly and yet so effectively. Of course he shrank
from the trial and the miserable sort of publicity all such trials
compel; but he was _more_ fearful of the woman's future unexpected and
sudden sallies upon him, which both he and myself were satisfied would
be made at her convenience or whim, and was only too glad to agree to
any course which would compel silence and peace.

At