There was a new look on Theodore Shelf’s clean-shaven face which his wife had never seen before, and an evil glint in the eyes which scared her. Irresolutely she moved towards the door and put her fingers upon the handle. Then she drew herself up and stared him up and down with a look of forced contempt. “You will be good enough,” she said coldly, “to attend to the business which brought me here. I am going now to draw the checks I spoke about.”
Shelf looked at her very curiously. “Go,” he said, “and do as you please. You are a determined woman, and, because I am determined myself, I admire your strength of will; but for all that I think I shall murder you before I leave England.”
Mrs. Shelf laughed derisively, but with pale lips; and then she opened the door.
“What fine heroics,” she said. “But thanks for seeing after my balance. I must have that money.”
She passed through the door, closing it gently behind her, and Shelf returned to his armchair.
“George,” he said, as the fox-terrier stood up against his knee, “if that woman were only struck dead to-day, there are two thousand families in England who would rejoice madly if they only knew one-tenth part of what I know. Poor beggars, they have trusted me to the hilt, and she makes me behave to them like a fiend. D’you know, my small animal, I wish very much just now an earthquake or a revolution or something like that would occur, to shuffle matters up. Then if I got killed I should be spared a great deal of worry; and if I didn’t, why I’ve got large hands, and I believe could grab enough in the general scramble to suit even her. As it is, however, with neither earthquake nor revolution probable, I’m a desperate man, ready to take any desperate chance of commercial salvation. Eh, well!” he concluded, as he reached for a paper-block and rested it on George’s back, “worrying myself about the matter won’t improve it. The only thing is to try and keep things running in their present groove.” He broke off and scribbled a Biblical text. “Other men would have been suspected long before this. But my reputation has saved me.” He smiled to himself softly. “What a thing it is to be known as a thoroughly good man!”
He broke off at this point, and applied himself with gusto to writing his sermon for the ensuing Sunday.
CHAPTER IV.
BUSINESS AT A BALL.
When people are engaged, they usually contrive to meet with frequency, and so Amy Rivers showed no very great surprise at seeing Fairfax again later in the evening. She only said: “Why, I didn’t know you knew the Latchfords.” To which Hamilton Fairfax replied that he did not know them, but had met another man at the club who was coming to the party, and that the other man had brought him.