‘Or rather, let us hope that they will find us there. But suppose we pick the “Shark” up; suppose we are lying in Table Bay when she arrives. What is to happen? What end is to be served? On my honour, if Lady Monson were my wife----’ I snapped my fingers. ‘You are cold-hearted.’ ‘I am practical.’ ‘You would not extend your hand to lift up one who has fallen.’ ‘Do not put it so. The girl I marry will, of course, be an angel.’ Her lips twitched to a smile. ‘If she expands her wings and flies away from me, am I to pick up a blunderbuss with the notion of potting her as she makes sail? No, let her go. She is indeed still an angel, but a bad angel. A bad angel is of no use to a man. She poisons his heart, she addles his brains, she renders his sleep loathsome with nightmares, she buries a stiletto in the vitalest part of his honour. _Follow_ her, forsooth! I could be eloquent,’ said I with a young man’s confident laugh, ‘but I must remember that I am talking to Laura Jennings.’ We were interrupted by Wilfrid. He came slowly forking up through the hatch in his long-limbed way, and approached us with excitement in his manner. ‘Mad!’ he cried with a look over his shoulder. ‘Mad, as you say, by George! you were both right, and I’m deuced glad to have made the discovery. Why, here was this fellow, d’ye see, Charles, hanging about me at all hours of the day, free to enter my room at any time when I might be in bed and sound asleep. Confoundedly odd, though.’ ‘Are you talking of Muffin?’ said I. ‘Ay, of Muffin, to be sure.’ ‘He’s not gone mad, I hope?’ ‘I think so, any way,’ he answered with a wise nod that was made affecting to me by the tremble in his lids, and the childish assumption of shrewdness and knowingness you found in his eyes and the look of his face. ‘What has he done?’ asked Miss Jennings, playing with the leaves of the volume on her knee.