eleven o'clock
Indeed , the Great Lakes gamble now seemed to him a negligible trifle in the comparison -- what were its profits of a few hundred thousands beside the millions that would surely be his when the great Woolens Monopoly , bought in for a small fraction of its value , should be controlled by a group of which he would be the dominant personality ? He ventured ; he won . He was now secure -- was not Dumont dispossessed , despoiled , dying ? At eleven o'clock on that Monday morning he was seated upon his embossed leather throne , under his grandfather 's portrait , immersed in an atmosphere of self-adoration . At intervals he straightened himself , distended his chest , elevated his chin and glanced round with an air of haughty dignity , though there was none to witness and to be impressed . In Wall Street there is a fatuity which , always epidemic among the small fry , infects wise and foolish , great and small , whenever a paretic dream of an enormous haul at a single cast of the net happens to come true . This paretic fatuity now had possession of James ; in imagination he was crowning and draping himself with multi-millions , power and fame .