She knew that she had got the Romney safe in her arms.
CHAPTER XI.
THE PICTURE RECOVERED
In the half-dark passage Rhoda stood, alone, when Jack Rotherfield had left her, uncertain what to do.
The first impulse of thankfulness and delight, in the thought that she had rescued Sir Robert’s favourite picture, that in a few moments he would be congratulating himself on its safe return, was quickly succeeded by a feeling of horror, of dread, when she realised the ever-increasing difficulties of her own position.
What should she say to him? How should she explain the manner in which she had obtained possession of the lost treasure?
To tell the whole truth was, for many reasons, out of the question.
In the first place, Jack Rotherfield, in asking her her terms, had, as it were, bound her in honour not to betray him; and, although she now appreciated the fact that, in keeping silence, she would be compounding a felony, she did not know what else to do.
Certainly Jack deserved to be denounced as a thief, and a traitor to his best friend. Remembering the horrible affair of ten years before, and that he had been concerned in it, she recognised that he must be a man wholly without conscience or sense of honour, since he could rob his best friend, deceive him, and even incur the guilt of a worse crime.
Whether the death of poor Langton were the result of murder or manslaughter, the silence of the man who had caused it gave reason for the worst suspicions.
But that was not by any means the whole of the difficulty. Even supposing that Rhoda had felt it her duty to denounce Jack to Sir Robert, regardless of the tacit obligation she was now under to be silent about his share in the theft of the picture, how could she take upon herself to open up such a disastrous series of questions as the baronet would naturally ask? How could she undertake the task of enlightening him as to the extent to which his own wife was involved in the deception which had been practised upon him?