She bowed her face gravely.
“And so,” he said bitterly, “after all that I have gone through, and all I’ve done, you want me to give this fortune up. My God, Elsie, you know what a hateful thing poverty is as well as I do. Think what this money would buy. Love for one another we have already, and we can get besides every pleasure the heart can wish for. I know as well as you do that it was dirtily earned, and I hated the work of getting it, and I’ll never dabble in anything so foul again. My instincts bid me live as an upright gentleman, and with the proper income I could do that, and forget I was ever anything else. When I cease to be poor, I cease to be in the way of temptation. Don’t you see? And, besides, there is no chance of being found out. The money is supposed to be blotted out of existence, and it’s there now in the ’Glades as a private mine to dig at as we choose. Besides, I’m bound in honor to go on after getting thus far. It isn’t as if I were working for my own hand alone. Shelf’s my partner, and I can’t neglect Shelf’s interests for a sentiment.”
“Mr. Shelf may do as he chooses, Pat; you yourself may do as you choose, dear; but I can’t alter what I’ve said. I love money, Heaven knows, but I couldn’t use money of that sort. You might forget how it came: I couldn’t. I can’t forget some things. I’ve a terrible memory when I don’t want it to act. I tried to forget you, Pat, ever since you left us in England till the day I saw you here, but I couldn’t. I used to pray for forgetfulness all those years, and it wouldn’t come; and if I were to marry you now, dear, with that money, I should always remember, just in the same way.”
“What is the use of carrying thumbscrews in your pocket?” he asked half angrily.
She smiled a little pained smile. “Can’t help it, Pat. I suppose it’s the way I’m built. But I’m only telling you facts.”
“I thought,” he said brusquely, “you wanted to go back into society, and have a steam yacht; and do things comfortably. Now, without this quarter of a million which is lying ready to be picked up, you have two hundred a year, and I have three, which make five hundred pounds in all. I might point out to you that one can’t do much continuous splashing amongst smart people on that, in London or anywhere else. Unless, of course, you married some one else.”
She flushed painfully. “Oh, Pat,” she said, “I don’t think I deserved that from you.”
He dropped his arms round her and drew her to him tenderly. “No, dear, you didn’t. I was a brute. But it’s hard for a man to speak soberly when he’s just had all his plans smashed to the smallest kind of fragments, and stamped upon by the only person in the world whose opinion he cares a rap about. Of course I know all this business was a theft, a piece of piracy pure and simple. But circumstances elbowed one into it, and I bowed my head to them. Circumstances—you, that is, and you entirely—now drag me out of it, and I’m going to bow again, and say ‘Kismet.’ Only I wonder what will become of the money. I swear Shelf shan’t have the whole half million and the steamer too. But I don’t see how we are to give my share back to the rightful owners. One can’t very well draw a cheque on the Everglades, and send it to them anonymously by post.”