I asked himwhat he had thought of me that first night."You don't really want to know, do you?" Only if it's nice."He grinned. "I had staked out my obj...ctives, identified my target ofopportunity, and was eager to close and engage in hand to handmanoeuvres." Bastard." I threw a cushion at him. "I was terrified of you that firsttime, pretending to be out with the lads, and then when we met on theferry, the penny still didn't drop that we were set up. I'm still notsure I will forgive you.". " On the appointed afternoon, Ellen appeared at my office. I don't remember what my telephonic impression had been, but when I met her in our reception area I was struck by the beautiful young woman before me. She was short and slender, with a beautiful figure, and attractively groomed. She had a self-confident manner and shook my hand warmly. We went to my office and chatted, while I completed the task with which I had been involved. "Yes," she had enjoyed her summer clerking and had been. Although I was now rapidly approaching fifty, nothing much had changed over the intervening decades. He regarded me (along with most of the rest of the human race) with an indifferent disdain he could not be bothered to conceal, while his furious energy and restless intelligence, undimmed by advancing years, caused me to think of him as more like some untamable force of nature than a blood relative. As the years went by he had become increasingly isolated and bitter. Despite his age, he still. My workload increased tremendously, but the cases I was assigned were high profile and quite a few of them took me out of town anywhere from two to five days.Three years went by and the first of every year when the partners sat down and apportioned out shares I saw my piece of the pie getting bigger and bigger. I was sure that I was on the fast track and would make partner in the next year or two.I was returning home from a four-day trip to Dayton, Ohio. I had managed to get done in time to.