Chapter 25

have known it was not true, but he was so fastidious, so terribly sensitive, the mere thought that you could have been suspected of such a thing even would have preyed upon him so terribly."

"Well," said Rendel, in a low voice--the last possibility of clearing himself was put behind him, and the darkness fell again--"he is beyond reach of it. It is I who must suffer now."

Rachel had walked to the other side of the garden, pressing her handkerchief to her eyes and trying to control herself. Now she came swiftly back, a sudden determination in her heart.

"Frank," she cried, "why must you suffer? We must find out who really did it."

"I can't," said Rendel.

"But have you tried?"

"Yes," he said. "As much as was possible."

"But it must be possible," she cried. And she came to him, her eyes and face glowing with resolve. "If the whole world came to me and said that you had done this I should not believe it. I remember so well my mother saying, the day that I came back from Maidenhead," and their eyes met in the recollection of that happy, cloudless time, "'what a man needs is some one to believe in him,' and I thought to myself that when--if--I married I would believe in my husband as she believed in my father."

At this moment one of the Swiss waiters came quickly through the pavilion into the garden.

"Monsieur Pateley," he said, "wishes to know if Madame is at home." Rachel and her husband looked at each other in consternation.

"I can't see him at this moment," Rendel said, going to the gate.

"Can't we send him away?" said Rachel, anxiously.

"Where is he?" addressing the waiter. But it was too late. The question answered itself, as Pateley's large form appeared behind that of the waiter, distinctly seen on every side of it. Rachel, trying to control her face into a smile of welcome, went forward to meet him as Rendel disappeared amongst the trees, from whence he could get round into the house another way.