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.” CHAPTER XXII. MR. SHELF’S LITTLE SURPRISE. Mr. Theodore Shelf had reached the end of his tether, and, like a shrewd business man, he knew it. There is a certain mad excitement in standing on a high ledge of an iceberg when the steps which you have clambered up by have splintered away, and the hundred-foot cliffs above are threatening every instant to descend in crashing avalanche. You know you have to jump into the cold green waters below, or be crushed out of existence; and lingering to the very last second is not without its fierce pleasures. The dive is chilly; the waters beneath unknown; final escape most hazardous. But it is not these things which make you loiter; it is the nearness of the crash behind; and that is fascinating beyond all words. Mr. Shelf was in a similar position. He knew that his commercial ledge was growing more and more dangerous every minute, by reason of the Law of the Land which loomed above, and yet for the life of him he could not tear himself away. He had waiting for him that snug _estançia_ on the banks of the Rio Paraguay which he had time-before made ready against a possible cataclysm; but it was left to wait. The excitement of lingering on in London was meat and drink to him. His daring would be spoken about afterwards; and though, it is true, he might not be blessed, still he would not be forgotten. That last was, perhaps, the chief reason which made him stay on. The vanity of the man was colossal. He had been tickled by the improving young men, he had been tickled in his tabernacle, he had been tickled by a parliamentary constituency; but these did not glut him. He wanted more, far more; and if he could not distinguish himself in the way his wife had hoped, he would at last be famous in his fall. If only he could have stayed on three days more and seen his baronetcy gazetted in the birthday list, he could then have made the most sensational exit on record. But even debarred of this—for he could not avert the crash by even those three short days—he did not intend to depart without his special ruffle of Society drums.