Throughout his writing life, Anthony Trollope denied that his style, or any writer’s style, was worthy of much notice.  Despite the much-vaunted plainness of Trollope’s prose, this chapter shows that his style, apparently designed to erase itself, becomes the means of involving readers as active participants in unstable processes of moral and political adjudication. Building on recent accounts that have considered the ethics of prose style, the chapter suggests that Trollope’s style fosters a degree of moral ambivalence. His style is influenced by the idea of gentlemanly ease and is at the same time brought into rivalry with the professional lawyer. Although in novels such as Orley Farm (1861) Trollope (unreasonably) railed against lawyers willing to give a good defence to scoundrels, his own ‘elusive style’ is not as strident in judgement as such invective might lead us to expect.