he proportion that fact assumed in existence.

"My mother died long years ago," said Rendel, in a lower voice. "Not so
long, though, that I did not understand." Rachel looked at him with a
soft light of pity flooding her face, and drawing the words out of him,
he knew not how. "My father married again," he said, "while I was still
a child--while I needed looking after, at least."

"Oh," said Rachel, "you had a stepmother?"

"Yes," he said, "I had a stepmother," and his face involuntarily became
harder as he recalled that long stretch of loveless years--the father
had never quite understood the shy and sensitive child--during which he
had been neglected, suppressed, lonely, with no one to care that he did
well at school and college, and that later he was getting on in the
world, with no place in the world that was really his home. Then he went
on after a moment: "And now my father is dead, too, so I am pretty much
alone, you see."

"How terrible it must be!" said Rachel softly. "How extraordinary! I
can't quite imagine what it is like."

"Well, it is not very pleasant," said Rendel looking up, and again
penetrated by the sweet compassion in Rachel's face. "You can't think
how strange it is----" He broke off and got up as Sir William Gore came
downstairs towards them. Sir William, with the true instinct of a
father, had chosen this moment to wonder whether Rachel was being
sufficiently amused, and was bearing down upon her and her companion
with an air of cheerful virtue which proclaimed that her conversation
with Rendel was at an end. Sir William's political principles did not
permit him to think very much of Rendel, since he was private secretary
to a man whose policy Sir William cordially detested, Lord Stamfordham,
the Foreign Minister, whose acute and wide-reaching sagacity inspired
his followers with a blind confidence to himself and his methods. Lord
Stamfordham had soon discovered the practical aptitude, the political
capacity, the determined, honourable ambition that lay behind Francis
Rendel's grave exterior, and had made up his mind, as indeed had others,
that the young man had a distinguished future before him.

"Ah, Rendel, how are you?" said Gore. "What is your Chief going to do
next, eh?"

"I am afraid I can't tell you, Sir William," said Rendel with a half
smile.

"Well, the people round him ought to put the brake on," said Gore, "or I
don't know where the country will be."

"I am afraid it is a