n wife?

Rachel felt her brain reeling; and yet she was thankful for the light
which had been vouchsafed to her at last. It was but a lantern flash
through the darkness, which seemed the more opaque for that one thin
beam of light; but it was something, a beginning, a clew. For the rest
she was going straight to the man who had kept her so long in such
unnecessary ignorance.

Why had he not told her about Australia, at all events? What conceivable
harm could that have done? It would have been the strongest possible
bond between them. But Rachel went further as she thought more. Why not
have told her frankly that he had known Alexander Minchin years before
she did herself? It could have made no difference after Alexander
Minchin's death; then why had be kept the fact so jealously to himself?
And the dead man's painted eyes answered "Why?" with the bold and
mocking stare his wife could not forget, a stare which at that moment
assumed a new and sinister significance in her sight.

Rachel looked upward through the window, which was barred, and almost
totally eclipsed by shrubs; but a clout of sky was just visible under
the architrave. It was a very gray sky; gray also was Rachel's face in
the sudden grip of horror and surmise. Then a ragged edge of cloud
caught golden fire, a glimmer found its way into the dust and dirt of
the secret chamber, and Rachel relaxed with a slight smile but an
exceedingly decided shake of the head. Thereafter she escaped
incontinently, but successfully, as she had entered; closed the hidden
door behind her, and restored _The Faerie Queene_ very carefully to its
place. Rachel no longer proposed to join the select band of those who
have read that epic through.

CHAPTER XIV

BATTLE ROYAL

She went to her own rooms to think and to decide; and what she first
thought and then decided was sensible enough. She was thankful she had
not been caught like Fatima in the forbidden room; not that she lacked
the courage to meet the consequences of her acts, but it would have put
her in the wrong and at a disadvantage at the first crash of battle. And
a battle royal Rachel quite expected; nor had she the faintest intention
of disguising what she had done; but it was her husband who was to be
taken aback, for a change.

The Steels dined alone, as usual, or as much alone as a man and his wife
with a butler and two footmen are permitted to be at their meals. Steel
was at his best after these jaunts