en out for a long
walk to-day; he went for an expedition to the woods with Mr. Wentworth."

And she looked as if something else that she did not say were on the tip
of her tongue.

"It must have been delightful in the woods to-day," said Pateley, hardly
knowing what he answered. He also was preoccupied by the story he had
heard and wondering how much she knew of it. "Are you going home now?"
he said, as Rachel turned away from the promenade in the direction she
had pointed out.

"I think so. I am a little tired," said Rachel, holding out her hand.

"May I come and see you?" Pateley said.

"Please do," said Rachel.

"I certainly shall," Pateley said. "It will be delightful to get away
for a little while from this seething mass of humanity."

And he again gave one of his loud laughs as he also went towards the
tent, to plunge with the greatest zest into the seething mass whose
company he had been contemning.

CHAPTER XXIV

Rachel turned in the other direction and walked slowly back to the
pavilion. What had happened? What had she been hearing? The slightest
mental exertion still made her head ache, but she was conscious that if
she once let herself go and made the effort it would be possible for her
to understand. But that moment had not come yet.

She had not been many minutes in her quiet shady garden when the little
gate at the bottom of it was thrown open, and her husband came quickly
in, looking round him with an anxious, hurried glance as though not
knowing what he might find. What had he expected? He could hardly have
told. But as he drew nearer and nearer he had been gradually nerving
himself for the worst. He had been dreading to find he knew not what.
Wentworth might be sitting with Rachel, the faces of both telling that
Wentworth's would-be explanations had been of no avail; or Rachel
herself might have been absent--she might have strolled out into the
crowd and there unawares heard rumours of what he felt convinced must by
this time be in every one's mind, on every one's lips. It was therefore
for the moment an unmeasured relief to find that all seemed as usual,
that Rachel was sitting there quiet and cool before her little
tea-table.

"Ah!" he almost gasped, with a long sigh, as he sank into a chair and
leant his head against the back of it with a weary, hunted look.

"Frank!" said Rachel anxiously, "what is the matter? What has happened?"

"What do you mean?" he said, sitting up, with