"A reasonable fee."
"Margaret authorizes you to say all this to me?"
"She doesn't know I'm saying it. Has no least idea I meant to say it."
"Oh, so you are acting independently, as a counterstroke to save yourself from being forced to pay rent for the good home you and your family enjoy?".
"I am acting independently of Margaret anyway," returned Walter, quite unruffled.
"Margaret will forbid it!"
"If I were not taking up this case with you this morning, Leitzel, Margaret would herself, I am confident, put it into the hands of another lawyer, who might not be so interested as I am in keeping it out of the newspapers. Margaret would probably bungle the thing and get herself into a mess of trouble, so I've decided I'd better do it for her and do it with a minimum of fuss and worry for her."
"She has told you she was going to put it into a lawyer's hands?"
"She has told me nothing; at least she thinks she has told me nothing."
"What do you mean by that—that she thinks she has told you nothing?"