have no need to find out," he said slowly. "I know
who did it."

Rachel sprang up.

"What?" she cried, quivering with anxiety. "Do you mean that you know
now, that you can tell Frank, that you can tell Lord Stamfordham? Oh,
why didn't you say so?"

Pateley paused.

"I didn't know," he said, "that Stamfordham had accused your husband of
it, and so I kept--I was rather bound to keep--the other man's secret."

"The other man?" Rachel repeated, looking at him.

"Yes," said Pateley. "The man who did it."

Rachel started. Of course, yes--if her husband had not done it some one
else had, they were shifting the horrible burden on to another. But that
other deserved it, since he was the guilty man.

"Yes," she said lower, "of course I know there is some one else!--it is
very terrible--but--but--it's right, isn't it, that the man who has done
it should be accused and not one who is innocent?"

"Yes," said Pateley, "it is right."

"You must tell me," she said, "you must!--you must tell me everything
now, as I have told you. Is it some one to whom it will matter very
much?"

Pateley waited.

"No," he said at length, "it won't matter to him."

Rachel looked at him, not understanding.

He went on, "Nothing will ever matter to him again. He is dead."

"Dead, is he?" said Rachel, but even in the horror-struck tone there
rang an accent of glad relief. "Then it can't matter to him. And it is
right, after all, that people should know what he did. It is right, it
is justice, isn't it?" she repeated, as though trying to reassure
herself, "not only because of Frank?"

"Yes," said Pateley, "I believe that it is right, that it is justice."
Then as he looked at her he suddenly became conscious of an unwonted
difficulty of speech, of an almost unknown wave of emotion rising within
him, of shrinking from the words he was now clear had to be said.

"Mrs. Rendel," he said at last, "I am afraid it will be very painful to
you to hear what I am going to say."

She looked at him bewildered. He waited one moment, almost hoping that
the truth might dawn upon her before he spoke, but she was a thousand
miles from being anywhere near it. "Those papers which I published in
the _Arbiter_ the next morning were shown to me on the afternoon your
husband had them to copy, by--" again the strange unfamiliar
perturbation stopped him, and he felt he had to make a distinct effort
to bring the name out--"your father, Sir William Gore."

Rach