"You!" said Rachel, with wide-open eyes.
"Yes," said Rendel shortly. "That I had betrayed the great secret entrusted to me."
"Frank!" she cried. "But of course you didn't!"
"Of course I didn't," Rendel said quietly.
"And—then——?" said Rachel breathlessly.
"Then," Rendel said, shrinking at the very recollection, "Stamfordham told me he believed I had done it. Then of course,"—and the words came with an effort—"there was an end of everything, and I knew that there was nothing left for me to do but to go under, to throw everything up. I knew that people would turn their backs upon me, and I didn't see Stamfordham again until—until to-day. And to-day Wentworth and I went up to that place in the woods to lunch, and by chance, by the most horrible, evil fortune, we came upon a luncheon party at which Stamfordham was, and—and," he said trying to speak calmly, "when he saw me he refused to sit down at the same table with me." And as he spoke Rachel felt that things were becoming clear to her and that she was beginning to understand. The comments of the people who had stood by her and discussed the scene they had witnessed still rang in her ears, and she realised what the horror of that scene must have been.
"Frank!" she cried, with her tears falling. And she went to him and took his hand, then drew his head against her bosom as though to give him sanctuary. "Imagine believing that you, you of all people..." and the broken words of comfort and faith in him, of love and belief again gave him a moment of feeling that rehabilitation might be possible.
"Frank!" Rachel went on, "tell me this. Did my father know?"
"Know what?" Rendel said, starting up, the iron reality again facing him.
"That you were accused? That they could believe that you had done such a shameful thing?"