exhausted, was leaning back in his chair with his
eyes closed. Rendel looked at her face of quivering anxiety as it bent
over her father, then turned slowly and left the room.

CHAPTER XVII

Rendel came downstairs, hardly conscious of what he was doing, a wild
conflict of emotion raging in his mind. He shut himself into his study,
and tried to distinguish clearly the threads of motive and conduct that
had become so hideously entangled. It sounds a simple thing, doubtless,
as well as a praiseworthy one, to discover the doer of an evil deed, to
convict him, to bring home to him what he has done, and to prove the
innocence of any other who may be suspected. Such a course, when spoken
of in general terms, gives a praiseworthy and sustaining sense of a duty
accomplished towards society. But it is in reality a much more
complicated operation than we are apt to think. The evildoer,
unfortunately for our sense of righteousness in prosecuting him, is not
always one who has unmixed evil instincts, and nearly every contingency
of human conduct becomes, as we contemplate it, many-sided enough to be
very confusing. And it was beginning to dawn upon Rendel that, although
it may fulfil the ends of abstract justice that the guilty should be
exposed and the innocent acquitted, such an act takes an ugly aspect
when the eager pursuer is himself the innocent man who is to be
vindicated, and the guilty one a weaker and defenceless person who is to
be put in his place. "And yet," he said to himself bitterly, as he tried
to think of it impartially, "if it were a question of any one else's
reputation and not of my own I should be bound to say who the guilty man
was." What was he to do? What could he do? He did not know how long he
had been sitting there when Rachel came quickly in.

"Oh! Frank," she said, with a face of alarm, "he's very ill. I'm sure he
is. I've sent for Dr. Morgan to come at once. He fainted after you left,
and he's only just come round again. Oh! I am terribly anxious," and she
looked at him, her lips quivering, then put her hands before her eyes
and burst into tears.

Rendel's heart smote him. Everything else, as he looked at her, faded
into the background. The thing that mattered was Rachel was the woman he
loved. It was he who had brought this grief upon her.

"Darling," he said, "I'm so sorry."

She shook her head and tried to smile.

"Oh," she said, trying to suppress her tears, "I ought not to have lef