"Yes, sir," said Thacker, taking the precious packet and departing, with a secret thrill of wondering excitement. Rendel pulled down the lid of the table, drawing a sort of long breath as he did so, like one who has cleared the big fence immediately in front of him, and is ready for the next. Sir William's breath was coming and going quickly. "I'm afraid you don't look very fit for chess, Sir William," he said kindly, struck with his father-in-law's look of haggard anxiety and illness. "No," Sir William said feebly, "not to-day, I'm afraid." "I'm sorry to see you like this," Rendel said. "Let me help you upstairs. What have you been doing with yourself since I left you? You don't look nearly so well as when you came down." "I feel a little faint," Sir William said. "It would be better for me to go and rest now, perhaps." And leaning on Rendel's arm, and followed solicitously by Rachel, he went upstairs. CHAPTER XV The night passed slowly and restlessly for Sir William Gore, although he slept from sheer exhaustion, and even when he was not sleeping was in a state of semi-coma, without any clear perception of what had happened. But in his dreams he lived through one quarter of an hour of the day before, over and over and over again, always with the same result, always with the same sense of some unexpected, horrible, shameful catastrophe, that was to lead to his utter humiliation. That was the impression that still remained when at last the morning came, and he finally awoke to the life of another day. Over and over again he went over the situation as he lay there, Pateley's words ringing in his ears, his looks present before him. Again he felt the sensation of absolute sickness at his heart that had gripped him at the moment he had realised that the map had been photographed, passing as much out of his own power as though he had given it to a man in the street. Does any one really acknowledge in his inmost soul that he has on a given occasion done "wrong," without an immeasurable qualifying of that word, without a covert resentment at the way other people may label his action? There is but one person in the world who even approximates to knowing the history of any given deed. The very fact of snatching it from its context puts it into the wrong proportion, the fact of contemplating it as though it were something deliberate, separate, complete in itself, apart from all that has led up to it, apart from the complication and pressure of circumstance. Sir William went over and over again in his mind all that had happened the day before, trying to realise under what aspect his actions would appear to others--over and over again, until everything became blurred and he hardly knew under what aspect they appeared to himself. He felt helplessly indignant with Fate, with Chance, that had with such dire results made him the plaything of a passing impulse. Then with the necessity of finding an object for his anger, his thoughts