t
him. I daresay you didn't know, but it has done him the most terrible
harm. Did you tell him, then, about--about--the thing you told me of,
that you had been suspected--of telling something--what was it?" and she
passed her hand over her forehead as if unable to think.

"No," said Rendel, "I didn't tell him that _I_ had been accused of it. I
daresay he guessed I had. I told him it had happened."

"But, Frank, why did you?" she said. "I implored you not."

"Rachel," he said, "do you realise what it means to me that I should be
accused of a thing like this?"

"Of course, yes, of course," she said, evidently still listening for any
sound from upstairs. "But still a thing like that, that can be put right
in a few minutes, cannot matter so much as life and death...."

And again her voice became almost inaudible.

"There are some things," said Rendel in a low voice, "that matter more
to a man than life and death."

"Do you mean to say," said Rachel, "that it matters more that you should
be supposed to have done something that you have not done, than that my
father should not get well?"

"Supposing your father had been wrongfully accused of something
underhand and dishonourable," said Rendel, "would not that matter more
to him than--than--anything else?"

Rachel put up her hands with a cry as if to ward off a blow.

"My father!" she said, drawing away from Rendel. "You must not say such
a thing. How could it be said?"

"You endure," said Rendel, "that it should be said about me."

"About you! That is different," she said, unable in the tension of her
overwrought nerves to choose her words. "You are young, you can defend
yourself; but it is cruel, cruel of you to say that it might happen to
my father. You don't realise what my father is to me or you couldn't say
such things even without meaning them. No, you can't know, you can't
understand, or you couldn't, just for your own sake, have gone to him
to-day when he is so ill and told him things that excited him."

"I think I do understand," Rendel said, forcing himself to speak calmly.
"Of course I know, I have always known, perhaps not quite so clearly as
to-day, that--that--he must come first with you."

"Oh! in some ways he must, he must," Rachel said, half entreatingly, yet
with a ring of determination in her voice. "I promised my mother that I
would, as far as I could, take her place, and while he lives I must.
Frank, I would give up my life to save him suf