[Sentrytools-general] S on the river, the look of the boughs as they dipped lazily into the wa

[Clare D. <ura...@bw...>]

; but fortunately this choice would not be thrust upon him. He
looked up and met Rachel's eyes fixed upon him.

"Yes," he said. "I will help you." "Oh, thank

you!" she cried, her heart swelling with relief.
"Will you, can you find out about it?" "Yes," said Pateley again. He
paused a moment, then came back and stood in front of her. "I 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