"How so?"
"Why, a friend—the right sort—could do this," Bofinger continued. "He could tell her confidentially—that he thought—that he rather suspected, well, that he'd heard things weren't going as well with you as people thought. In fact, he feared you were going to have a close squeeze. He needn't say anything direct now, that would make her suspicious, but he might advise her to beg you to cut expenses down all you could."
"Mr. Bofinger," Fargus cried, slapping his hands together, as Bofinger with a satisfied chuckle turned to him for his approval, "that's an elegant idea! And you're the man to do it!"
"Me?" Bofinger exclaimed, in real surprise at such quick success. "But I'm not exactly, do you think, in the position of a friend?"
"She'd never know it!" Fargus insisted. "I say, you're the man."
"Why, frankly, sir," the lawyer objected, "I can't see I'd do—I really don't—you can't say those things off-hand—I'd have to get acquainted more—"
Bofinger resisted so well and protested so earnestly that, an hour later, Fargus carried him away, under his arm, to that meeting which had come so near to Sheila's undoing.
The situation was a perilous one for the lawyer. There was, he knew, the insane jealousy of the misanthrope to be reckoned with, the danger that Fargus would fear more from his intimacy than from the prodigality of his wife. Fortunately for Bofinger, Sheila's attitude had completely reconciled Fargus, who wanted her to receive advice, but more that it should come from unwelcome lips.
In a fever of trepidation, Sheila awaited the next meeting with the lawyer. The sense of peril had sent her panic-stricken, with almost affection, to the shelter of her husband. The instinct of safeguarding her home and the memory of her pinched and wandering career impelled her towards all the virtues, in an incentive to flight from the menace of the lawyer.
Many times she debated the consequences which would follow confession and an appeal to her husband's generosity. Invariably she recoiled, as before an impossibility, convinced that he would never pardon the slightest deception. She had divined under the intoxication of love the implacable, dormant fierceness of the misanthrope, and with this perception she came to recognize by what slender bonds she held his savage nature imprisoned. To surrender a moment her supremacy meant at best servitude. Besides, in her ignorance of the law she saw no escape from the marriage contract which lay in the hands of Bofinger.