Lady Adela, it may be presumed, had some occult means of discovering from inside who was drawing near her fateful quarters, or else she had the simpler methods more usually employed by mortals, of looking to see. At all events, as Stamfordham came towards her enclosure, she appeared on the threshold and winningly lifted the mysterious curtain, burlesquing a low curtsey in reply to Stamfordham's bow.
"Lord Stamfordham!" Pateley said hurriedly. Stamfordham, in some surprise, looked round. He had been seeing Pateley on and off during the day. Why did he accost him in this way? But the urgent note in his voice arrested his attention. Then, as he looked up, he saw an anxious pale-faced, girlish figure standing by Pateley, looking at him with large brown eyes filled with indescribable anxiety. It was a face that he knew, that he had seen somewhere. Who was it? For one puzzled moment he tried to remember. Pateley took the bull by the horns.
"Lord Stamfordham," he said, "Mrs. Rendel wants to speak to you."
Mrs. Rendel! Of course it was Mrs. Rendel. He had last seen her that day at Cosmo Place. Again a wave of indignation rushed over him. Rachel advanced desperately, looking as though she were going to speak. Stamfordham, involuntarily looking round him at the crowd of observers and listeners, said quickly in a low voice, "I am very sorry, it is no good. It is impossible." And then to Pateley, "It is no good, I can't do anything. You must tell her so," and he passed through the curtain which Lady Adela let drop behind him. Rachel looked at Pateley, then to his amazement and also to his involuntary admiration she lifted the curtain and passed in too.
The two people inside stood aghast at her appearance. She had followed so quickly upon Stamfordham's steps that he was still standing looking round him at his strange surroundings, Lady Adela facing him with a smile of welcome. The apparatus of the fortune-teller apparently consisted in certain cabalistic properties—wands, dials with signs upon them, and the like—arranged round a table. Stamfordham spoke first. He was absolutely convinced that Rachel had come to appeal to him for mercy, and was as absolutely clear that it was an appeal to which he could not listen.
"Mrs. Rendel," he said, "I am afraid I am obliged to tell you that I cannot listen to anything you may have to say. I can guess, of course, why you have come here, and I am sorry for you," he said, leaning on the pronoun. "But I can do nothing," and he spoke slowly and inexorably, "I can do nothing for either you or your husband." But Rachel had now lost all fear, all misgiving.
"I don't think," she said, unconsciously drawing herself up and looking straight at him, "you know what I have come to say, and I must ask you to listen for a moment."
"I think I do know," Stamfordham said sternly, and she saw he meant to go out.
"I have come to tell you," she said, quickly standing between him and the door, "that my husband was wrongfully accused of the thing that you believed he did." Stamfordham shook his head: this was what he expected to hear. "I know who did it, I have found out to-day," and she grew more and more assured as she went on. Stamfordham started, then looked incredulous again. "I have come to tell you who did it, that you may know my husband is innocent." Then she became aware of Lady Adela, who, having at first been much annoyed at her brusque intrusion, was now suddenly roused to interest, even to sympathy. Rachel turned to her. "I must say this," she said. "Don't you see, don't you understand, what it is to me?"
"Yes, yes, you must," the other woman said, with a sudden impulse of help and sympathy. "Go on," and she went outside. Stamfordham felt a slight accession of annoyance as Lady Adela passed out; he felt it was going to be very difficult for him to deal as cruelly as he was bound to do with the anxious, quivering wife before him. He stood silent and absolutely impenetrable. Rachel went on quickly in broken sentences.