His wife drew back a step, half-scared. She had scarcely ever heard the man laugh once in all her life with him; never like that; and she did not know what to make of it. But at last he stopped and spoke. “You’re a clever woman, Laura, and a handsome one. I’ve never seen you look so fine as you do to-night. But you are a bit too rapid in some of your movements. You’re counting at present that, beyond a doubt, the servants will be calling you ‘miladi’ within a fortnight, and I suppose you’ll go out to-morrow and get a new card-plate engraved. Well, my dear, if I were you, I’d wait. A fortnight is fourteen days, and in every minute of that time something may happen to bring you an appalling disappointment. For instance, I may die. Take it that the Almighty does make me die, and where then comes in the use for your new card-plate? There is precedent for creating a baroness, I grant you; but I don’t think they are likely to manufacture another precedent by making you Lady Shelf in your own right if I am not at hand to share the dignity.” A servant came in and announced that Fairfax was in the hall below. Amy Rivers said “Good-night” hurriedly, and slipped out of the room. Mrs. Shelf took up her stand in front of the fireplace, flushed with triumph and wrath, and looking her superbest. “You are talking the merest nonsense, Theodore,” she said, “and before that girl, too! Thank goodness, she is practically one of the family, and will not gossip. Die, indeed! You die! what an absurdity! One would think, to hear you, that the world was coming to an end before the Birthday List is out. Of course you will have the baronetcy. There can’t be a doubt about it now, thanks to me.” “What do you want me to say?” Shelf asked. “Well, to begin with, in common decency you might thank me. If it had not been for my diplomacy in this house to-night, you would only have had a beggarly knighthood offered, if as much as that. You have the chance of making a sensation now.” Shelf stood slowly up, and strode up to the hearth-rug and faced her, with his head thrust forward and his arms folded across his breast. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I have a chance of making a sensation—one of the biggest of the century; and mostly owing to your efforts. The Lord grant that the chance slips away from me! You are very beautiful and very clever. But I believe, Laura, that you are the devil, sent expressly on earth to tempt. You’d better go to bed now, and leave me. This is one of the times when I am tempted to kill you.” CHAPTER XVIII. THE PLUME-HUNTERS’ DINNER-PARTY.