As the meal progressed the lawyer's imagination continued to picture the process of training through which she had put Bivens to develop from the poor white Southerner, the polished little man of the gilded world he now saw. No flight of his fancy could imagine the real humour of it all. He recalled Nan's diary with grim amusement. While Bivens had really been wax in her skillful hands since the day of her marriage, the one task she found hard was her desperate and determined effort to make him a well-groomed man. She was finally compelled to write out instructions for his daily conduct and enforce them with all sorts of threats and blandishments. She pasted this programme in Bivens's hat, at last, and he was in mortal terror lest some one should lift the inside band and read them. They were minute and painfully insistent on the excessive use of soap and water. They required that he wash and scrub two and three times daily. Not only did they prescribe tooth brushes and mouth washes, with all sorts of pastes and powders, but that he should follow it with an invention of the devil for torturing the gums known as "dental floss." To get even with the man who invented the thing Bivens bought him out and stopped its manufacture--only to find the scoundrel had invented a new one and had it on the market three weeks later. In the midst of this agony of breaking him to the copious use of water, Bivens found a doctor who boldly declared that excessive bathing was ruinous to the health--that water was made for fish and air for man. The little millionaire made him chief of the staff of his household doctors, but Nan refused to admit him when she learned his views. Bivens secretly built him a hospital, endowed it, and gave a fund to found a magazine to proclaim his gospel. It took two years to thoroughly break him so that she could always be sure that his nails were trimmed and his clothes in perfect style. He had long since ceased to struggle and had found much happiness of late years in vying with her in the perfection of his personal appearance until he had come to fit into the great establishments, which he had built at her suggestion, as though to the manor born. When the dinner was finished Bivens dismissed the waiter, lighted one of his huge cigars and drew from a morocco case which he had placed beside his chair a type-written manuscript. He turned its leaves thoughtfully a moment and handed them to Stuart. "There's a document, Jim, that cost me ten thousand dollars to prepare; for whose suppression a million dollars would be paid and no questions asked." "And you give it to me?" the District Attorney asked, with a smile. "I give it to you." "But why this generosity on your part, Cal?" The sarcasm which the lawyer threw into the playful banter of his tone was not lost on the financier. The mask of his cunning, dark visage was not slipped for a moment as he slowly replied: