t conclusion I must come to," said
Lord Stamfordham. "That it is not that you cannot give any explanation,
but that you decline to give it."

Rendel, to his intense mortification, felt that he was changing colour.
Stamfordham, looking at him earnestly, felt absolutely certain that he
knew.

"Rendel," he said, gravely, "take my advice before it is too late. Don't
let a wish to screen some one else prevent you from speaking. If you
have had the misfortune to--let the secret escape you, don't, to shelter
the person who published it, withhold the truth now. But I must remind
you also," and his words fell like strokes from a hammer, "that I am
asking it for my own sake as well as yours. When I brought you those
papers, I trusted you fully and unreservedly, and now that this
catastrophe has happened in consequence of my confidence in you I am
entitled to know what has happened."

"Yes," Rendel said. "I quite see your position, and I know that you have
a right to resent mine, but all I can say is that--" he stopped, then
went on again with firmer accents, "I don't suppose I can expect you to
believe me, but as a matter of fact I can't begin to conceive the
possibility of knowingly handing on to some one else such a secret as
that."

"Knowingly," said Stamfordham, "perhaps not," and he waited, to give
Rendel one more chance of speaking. But Rendel was silent. Then
Stamfordham went on in a different tone and with a perceptibly harsher
note in his voice. "My time is so precious that I am afraid if you have
nothing further to tell me there is no good in prolonging the
interview."

"Perhaps not," said Rendel, who was deadly white, and he made a motion
as though to go.

"Do you realise," said Stamfordham, "what this will mean to you?"

"Yes," said Rendel, "I do."

"Of course," said Stamfordham, "what I ought to do is to insist on the
inquiry being continued until the matter is cleared up and brought to
light."

A strange expression passed over Rendel's face as there rose in his mind
a feeling that he instantly thrust out of sight again, that
supposing--supposing--Stamfordham himself investigated to the bottom all
that had happened, and that without any doing of his, Rendel's, the
truth were discovered? Then with horror he put the idea away. Rachel! it
would give Rachel just as great a pang, of course, whoever found it out.
The flash of impulse and recoil had passed swiftly through his mind
before he woke up, as it were,