e after lunch, and he talked about you the whole
time. But he was most interesting at the table," continued Ethel,
sublimely unconscious of the lack of compliment in the comparison; "as
Jim would say, he fairly wiped up the ground with father, and it isn't an
easy thing to do."

"Wiped up the ground with Mr. Wing!" Honora repeated.

"Oh, in a delightfully quiet, humorous way. That's what made it so
effective. I couldn't understand all of it; but I grasped enough to enjoy
it hugely. Father's so used to bullying people that it's become second
nature with him. I've seen him lay down the law to some of the biggest
lawyers in New York, and they took it like little lambs. He caught a
Tartar in Mr. Erwin. I didn't dare to laugh, but I wanted to."

"What was the discussion about?" asked Honora.

"I'm not sure that I can give you a very clear idea of it," said Ethel.
"Generally speaking, it was about modern trust methods, and what a
self-respecting lawyer would do and what he wouldn't. Father took the
ground that the laws weren't logical, and that they were different and
conflicting, anyway, in different States. He said they impeded the
natural development of business, and that it was justifiable for the
great legal brains of the country to devise means by which these laws
could be eluded. He didn't quite say that, but he meant it, and he
honestly believes it. The manner in which Mr. Erwin refuted it was a
revelation to me. I've been thinking about it since. You see, I'd never
heard that side of the argument. Mr. Erwin said, in the nicest way
possible, but very firmly, that a lawyer who hired himself out to enable
one man to take advantage of another prostituted his talents: that the
brains of the legal profession were out of politics in these days, and
that it was almost impossible for the men in the legislatures to frame
laws that couldn't be evaded by clever and unscrupulous devices. He cited
ever so many cases . . . "

Ethel's voice became indistinct, as though some one had shut a door in
front of it. Honora was trembling on the brink of a discovery: holding
herself back from it, as one who has climbed a fair mountain recoils from
the lip of an unsuspected crater at sight of the lazy, sulphurous fumes.
All the years of her marriage, ever since she had first heard his name,
the stature of James Wing had been insensibly growing, and the vastness
of his empire gradually disclosed. She had lived in that empire: in it
his wo