"Rachel," he said. "I want to tell you something that happened the day before your father became worse, the day before you had that accident, the last day, in fact, that you remember." She looked at him with anxious eagerness. "Something tremendously important happened. Lord Stamfordham brought me some private notes of his own to decipher and copy." "Of course," said Rachel, "that I remember. In your study downstairs." "You remember?" said Rendel eagerly. Then instantly conscious, alas, that the evidence could do him no kind of good, "that I gave some papers to Thacker to take to Stamfordham?" "Stop a minute," said Rachel. "Yes, I remember that too. My father wanted to play chess afterwards, but he was too tired." "In those papers," said Rendel, "there was a very important secret, though it didn't remain a secret," he added, with a bitter little laugh, "for twenty-four hours. Those papers contained the notes of a conversation at the German Embassy at which that agreement was decided upon by which Germany and England divided Africa between them. It was _I_ copied those papers from Stamfordham's notes. I copied the map of Africa with a line down the middle of it. The next morning, no one knew how or why, that map appeared in the _Arbiter_." Rachel looked at him, still not understanding all that was implied. "Do you see what that means for me?" Rendel said. "It was not Stamfordham published it, he did not mean to do so until the moment should come, and since I was the person who had had the original notes, he thought that I had published it; that I had let it out, somehow." "You!" said Rachel, with wide-open eyes. "Yes," said Rendel shortly. "That I had betrayed the great secret entrusted to me." "Frank!" she cried. "But of course you didn't!" "Of course I didn't," Rendel said quietly. "And--then----?" said Rachel breathlessly. "Then," Rendel said, shrinking at the very recollection, "Stamfordham told me he believed I had done it. Then of course,"--and the words came with an effort--"there was an end of everything, and I knew that there was nothing left for me to do but to go under, to throw everything up. I knew that people would turn their backs upon me, and I didn't see Stamfordham again until--until to-day. And to-day Wentworth and I went up to that place in the woods to lunch, and by chance, by the most horrible, evil fortune, we came upon a luncheon party at which Stamfordham was, and--and," he said trying to speak calmly, "when he saw me he refused to sit down at the same table with me." And as he spoke Rachel felt that things were becoming clear to her and that she was beginning to understand. The comments of the people who had stood by her and discussed the scene they had witnessed still rang in her ears, and she realised what the horror of that scene must have been.