"And the scandal?" asked Lionel quietly. "What may it have been?"
"False scandal," carelessly answered John Massingbird. "But I thought it was true when I spoke it. I told your uncle that it was you who had played false with Rachel Frost."
"Massingbird!"
"Don't fancy I went to him open-mouthed, and said, 'Lionel Verner's the man.' A fellow who could do such a sneaking trick would be only fit for hanging. The avowal to him was surprised from me in an unguarded moment; it slipped out in self-defence. I'd better tell you the tale."
"I think you had," said Lionel.
"You remember the bother there was, the commotion, the night Rachel was drowned. I came home and found Mr. Verner sitting at the inquiry. It never struck me, then, to suspect that it could be any one of us three who had been in the quarrel with Rachel. I knew that I had had no finger in the pie; I had no cause to think that you had; and, as to Fred, I'd as soon have suspected staid old Verner himself; besides, I believed Fred to have eyes only for Sibylla West. Not but that the affair appeared to me unaccountably strange; for, beyond Verner's Pride, I did not think Rachel possessed an acquaintance."
He stopped to take a few whiffs at his pipe, and then resumed, Lionel listening in silence.
"On the following morning by daylight I went down to the pond, the scene of the previous night. A few stragglers were already there. As we were looking about and talking, I saw on the very brink of the pond, partially hidden in the grass—in fact trodden into it, as it seemed to me—a glove. I picked it up, and was on the point of calling out that I had found a glove, when it struck me that the glove was yours. The others had seen me stoop, and one of them asked if I had found anything. I said 'No.' I had crushed the glove in my hand, and presently I transferred it to my pocket."
"Your motive being good-nature to me?" interrupted Lionel.
"To be sure it was. To have shown that as Lionel Verner's glove, would have fixed the affair on your shoulders at once. Why should I tell? I had been in scrapes myself. And I kept it, saying nothing to anybody. I examined the glove privately, saw it was really yours, and, of course, I drew my own conclusions—that it was you who had been in the quarrel, though what cause of dispute you could have with Rachel, I was at a loss to divine. Next came the inquest, and the medical men's revelation at it: and that cleared up the mystery, 'Ho, ho,' I said to myself, 'so Master Lionel can do a bit of courting on his own account, steady as he seems.' I—"