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 turned first to Rendel, who had primarily put him in the position of gaining the knowledge he had used to such disastrous effect, and then to Pateley, who had taken it from him.

It is unpleasant enough for a child, at a time of life generally familiar with humiliation and chastisement, to see the moment nearing when his guilt will be discovered: but it is horrible for a man who is approaching old age, who is dignified and respected, suddenly to find himself in the position of having something to conceal, of being actually afraid of facing the judgment and incurring the censure of a younger man. And at that moment Gore felt as if he almost hated the man whose hand could hurl such a thunderbolt. Then his thoughts turned to Pateley, to the probable result of his operations in the City. In the other greater anxiety which he himself had suddenly imported into his life, that first care, which yet was important enough, of the “Equator,” had almost sunk out of sight. Would the mine turn out to be a gold mine after all? What would Pateley be able to do? Would he be able to make enough to cover his liabilities? and his head swam as he tried to remember what these might amount to.

In the meantime Rendel, in a very different frame of mind from that of his father-in-law, or, indeed, from that of his own of the night before, filled with a buoyant thrill of expectation, with the sense that something was going to happen, that everything might be going to happen, was looking out into life as one who looks from a watch tower waiting on fortune and circumstances, waiting confident and well-equipped without a misgiving. The day was big with fate: a day on which new developments might continue for himself, the thrill of excitement of the night before, the sense of being in the foreground, of being actually hurried along in the front between the two giants who were leading the way. The dining-room was ablaze with sunshine as he came into it, and in the morning light sat Rachel, looking up at him with a smile when he came into the room.

“What an excellent world it is, truly!” said Rendel, as he came across the room.

“I am glad it is to your liking,” she answered.

“You look very well this morning,” said Rendel, looking at her, “which means very pretty.”

“I don’t feel so especially pretty,” said Rachel, with something between a smile and a sigh.

“Don’t you? Don’t have any illusions about your appearance,” said Rendel. “Don’t suppose yourself to be plain, please.”

“I am not so sure,” said Rachel, as she began pouring out the tea.

“What is the matter with you?” said Rendel. “What fault do you find with the world, and your appearance?”

“I am perturbed about my father,” she said, her voice telling of the very real anxiety that lay behind the words. “I don’t think he is as well as he was yesterday.”

“Don’t you?” said Rendel, more gravely. “I am very sorry. What is the matter?”

“I can’t think,” Rachel answered. “He may have done too much yesterday afternoon.”

“He certainly looked terribly tired,” said Rendel.

“Terribly,” said Rachel, “but I can’t imagine why. He had been so absolutely quiet all the afternoon.”

“Well, you take care of him to-day,” said Rendel, unable to eliminate the cheerful confidence from his voice.

“I shall indeed,” said Rachel.

“Oh, he’ll come all right again, never fear,” said Rendel. “You mustn’t take too gloomy a view.”

“You certainly seem inclined to take a cheerful one this morning,” said Rachel, half convinced in spite of herself that all was well.

“Well, I do,” said Rendel. “I must say that in spite of the prevalent opinion to the contrary, I feel inclined this morning to say that the scheme of the universe is entirely right; it is just to my liking. The sunshine, and my breakfast, and my wife ”

“I am glad I am included,” she said.

“And the day to live through. What can a man wish for more?”

“It sounds as though you had everything you could possibly want, certainly,” said Rachel, smiling at him.

“I don’t know,” said Rendel, reflecting, “if it is that quite. The real happiness is to want everything you can possibly get. That is the best thing of all.”

“And not so difficult, I should think,” said Rachel.

“I am not sure,” said Rendel. “I am not sure that it is quite an easy thing to have an ardent hold on life. Some people keep letting it down with a flop. But I feel as if I could hold it tight this morning at any rate. I do not believe there is a creature in the wide world that I would change places with at this moment,” he went on, the force of his ardent hope and purpose breaking down his usual reserve.

“You are very enthusiastic to-day, Frank,” she said.

“Well, one can’t do much without enthusiasm,” said Rendel, continuing his breakfast with a satisfied air, “but with it one can move the world.”

“Is that what you are going to do?” said Rachel.

“Yes,” said Rendel nodding.

“Frank, I wonder if you will be a great man?”

“Can you doubt it?” said Rendel.

“Supposing,” she said, “some day you were a sort of Lord Stamfordham.”

“That is rather a far cry,” he replied. “By the way, I wonder where the papers are this morning? Why are they so late?”

“They will come directly,” Rachel said. “It is a very good thing they’re late, you can eat your breakfast in peace for once without knowing what has happened.”

“That is not the proper spirit,” said Rendel smiling, “for the wife of a future great man.”

“The only thing is,” said Rachel, “that if you did become a great man, I don’t think I should be the sort of wife for you. I am very stupid about politics, don’t you think so? I don’t understand things properly.”

“I think you are exactly the sort of wife I want,” said Rendel, “and that is enough for me. That is the only thing necessary for you to understand. I don’t believe you do understand it really.”

“Then are you quite sure,” she said, half laughing and half in earnest, “that you don’t like politics better than you do me?”

“Absolutely certain,” said Rendel, with a slight change of tone that told his passionate conviction. “I wish you could grasp that in comparison with you, nothing matters to me.”

“Nothing?” she repeated.

“There is nothing,” said Rendel, looking at her, “that I would not sacrifice to you my career, my ambitions, anything you asked for.”

“I am glad,” she said, “that you like me so much, but I don’t want you to make sacrifices,” and she spoke in all unconsciousness of the number of small sacrifices, of an unheroic aspect perhaps, that Rendel was daily called upon to make for her sake.

At this moment Thacker came in with the morning papers, which he laid on the table at Rendel’s elbow.

“Now then you are happy,” said Rachel lightly. “Now you can bury yourself in the papers and not listen to anything I say.”

“I wonder if there is anything about Stoke Newton and old Crawley’s resignation,” said Rendel, quite prepared to follow her advice. “I don’t suppose he takes a very jovial view of life just now, poor old boy. Oh, how I should hate to be on the shelf!”

“I don’t think you are likely to be, for the present,” said Rachel.

And then Rendel, pushing his chair a little away from the table, opened the papers wide, and began scanning them one after another, with the mild and pleasurable excitement of the man who feels confidently abreast of circumstances. Then, as he took up the Arbiter, his eye suddenly fell upon a heading that took his breath away. What was this? He dropped the paper with a cry.

“What is it, Frank?” said Rachel startled.

“Good Heavens! what have they done that for?” he said, springing to his feet in uncontrollable excitement.

“Done what?” said Rachel.

“Why, they have announced they have put in something that Lord Stamfordham ” He snatched up the paper again and looked at it eagerly. “It is incredible! and the map too, the very map, at this stage! Well, upon my word, he has made a mistake this time, I do believe.” And he still gazed at the paper as though trying to fathom the whole hearing of what he saw.

At this moment the door opened, and Thacker came in.

“Sir William wished me to ask you for some foolscap paper, ma’am, please,” he said, “with lines on it.”

“Foolscap paper? What is he doing?” said Rachel anxiously.

“He is writing, ma’am,” said Thacker. “He seems to be doing accounts.”

“Oh, I wish he wouldn’t!” Rachel said. “I must go and see. I’ll bring the foolscap paper myself, Thacker. Frank, there is some in your study, isn’t there?”

“What?” said Rendel, who, still absorbed in what he had just seen, had only dimly heard their colloquy.

“Some foolscap paper,” she repeated. “There is some in your study?”

“Yes, yes, in my writing-table,” he said absently.

Rachel went quickly out of the room. At that moment the hall door bell rang violently. Rendel started and went to the window. In the phase of acute tension in which he found himself, every unexpected sound carried an untold significance, but he was not prepared for what this one betokened: Lord Stamfordham in the street, dismounting from his horse. Stamfordham was accustomed to ride every morning from eight till nine, alone and unattended. Thacker hurried out to hold the horse. Rendel followed him and met Stamfordham on the doorstep. He led the way quickly across the hall into his study and shut the door. They both felt instinctively that greetings were superfluous.

“Have you seen the Arbiter?” Stamfordham said.

“Yes,” said Rendel, looking him straight in the face with eager expectation.

“So have I,” said Stamfordham, “at the German Embassy. I had not seen it before leaving home, but I saw a poster at the corner, and I went straight to Bergowitz to ask him what it meant; he is as much in the dark as I am.”

“In the dark!” said Rendel, looking at him amazed. “What! but was it not you who published it?”

“I publish it?” said Stamfordham. “Do you mean to say you thought I had?”

“Of course I did! who else?” said Rendel.

“Who else?” Stamfordham repeated. “I have come here to ask you that.”

“To ask me?” said Rendel, bewildered. “How should I know? I have not seen those papers since I gave the packet sealed to Thacker to take it to you.”

“And I received it,” said Stamfordham, “sealed and untampered with, and opened it myself, and it has not been out of my keeping since.”

“But at the German Embassy,” said Rendel, “since it was telegraphed...?”

“The substance of the interview was telegraphed,” said Stamfordham, “but not the map not the map,” he said emphatically. “That map no one has seen besides Bergowitz, you, and myself. Bergowitz it would be quite absurd to suspect, he is as genuinely taken back as I am I know that it didn’t get out through me, and therefore ” he paused and looked Rendel in the face.

“What!” said Rendel, with a sort of cry. A horrible light, an incredible interpretation was beginning to dawn upon him. “You can’t think it was through me?”

“What else can I think?” said Stamfordham Rendel still looked at him aghast “since the papers after I gave them into your keeping were apparently not out of it until they passed into mine again? I brought them to you here myself. Of course I see now I ought not to have done so, but how could I have imagined ”

Rendel hurriedly interrupted him.

“Lord Stamfordham, not a soul but myself can have had access to those papers. I went out of the room, it is true,” and he went rapidly over in his mind the sequence of events the day before, “for a short half-hour perhaps, when you came back here and I went out with you, but before leaving the room I remember distinctly that I shut the cover of my writing-table down with the spring, and tried it to see that it was shut, and then unlocked it myself when I came back.”

“Was any one else in the room?” said Stamfordham.

“Yes,” said Rendel, and a sudden idea occurred to him, to be dismissed as soon as entertained, “Sir William Gore.”

“Gore?” said Stamfordham, looking at Rendel, but forbearing any comment on his father-in-law.

“It was quite impossible,” Rendel said decidedly, answering Stamfordham’s unspoken words, “that he could have got at the papers; for, as I told you, when I came back again they were exactly where I had left them, and the thing locked with this very complicated key, and he showed it hanging on his chain.”

“It is evident,” Stamfordham repeated inflexibly, “that some one must have got hold of it with or without your knowledge. I warned you yesterday, you remember, about taking your any one in your household into your confidence.”

“And I did not,” Rendel said, grasping his meaning. “My wife did not even know that I had the papers to transcribe. She does not know it now.”

Stamfordham paused a moment. He could not in words accuse Rendel’s wife, whatever his silence might imply. Then he spoke with emphatic sternness.

“Rendel,” he said, “by whatever means the thing happened, we must know how. I must have an explanation.”

Rendel was powerless to speak.

“For you must see,” Stamfordham went on, “what a terrible catastrophe this might have been the danger is not over yet, in fact, although I may be strong enough for my colleagues to condone the fact that the public has been told of this before themselves, and the country may be strong enough for foreign Powers to do the same. But, as a personal matter, I must know how it got out, and I repeat, I must have an explanation. For your own sake you must explain.”

Rendel felt as if the ground were reeling under his feet.

“I will try,” he said, still feeling as if he were in some wild dream.

“When you have made inquiries,” Stamfordham said, still speaking in a brief tone of command, “you had better come and tell me the result. I shall be at the Foreign Office till twelve.”

“Till twelve. Very well,” said Rendel, feeling as if there was a dark chasm between himself and that moment. Mechanically he let Lord Stamfordham out, and stood as the latter mounted and rode away. Then he turned back into the house.