Rachel had regained her composure.  Her face was white and hard.

“You are right,” she said.  “He was at one time—­her lover.”

“And you consider, in consequence, that he is unfit to become your husband?”

“No.  He told me about it before he asked me to marry him.  I accepted him, knowing it.”

“Then he was trying to retrieve himself.  He acted towards you, at any rate, like an honorable man.”

Rachel laughed.  “So I thought at the time.”

“If you accepted him, knowing about his past, I don’t see why you should have thrown him over.  One dishonorable action sincerely repented does not make a dishonorable man.”

“I did not know all,” said Rachel.  “I do now.”

The Bishop looked into the fire.

Her next words surprised him.

“You really cared for Lord Newhaven, did you not?”

“I did.”

“Then as you know the one thing he risked his life to conceal for the sake of his children—­namely, his wife’s misconduct—­I think I had better tell you the rest.”

So Rachel told him in harsh, bald language the story of the drawing of lots, and how she and Lady Newhaven had remained ignorant as to which had drawn the short lighter.  How Hugh had drawn it; how when the time came he had failed to fulfil the agreement; how two days later Lord Newhaven had killed himself; and how she and Lady Newhaven had both, of course, concluded that Lord Newhaven must have drawn the short lighter.

Rachel went on, her hard voice shaking a little.

“Hugh had told me that he had had an entanglement with a married woman.  I knew it long before he spoke of it, but just because he risked losing me by owning it I loved and trusted him all the more.  I thought he was, at any rate, an upright man.  After Lord Newhaven’s death he asked me to marry him, and I accepted him.  And when we were talking quietly one day”—­Rachel’s face became, if possible, whiter than before—­“I told him that I knew of the drawing of lots. (He thought no one knew of it except the dead man and himself.) And I told him that he must not blame himself for Lord Newhaven’s death.  He had brought it on himself.  I said to him”—­Rachel’s voice trembled more and more-"’It was an even chance.  You might have drawn the short lighter yourself.’  And—­he—­said that if he had, he should have had to abide by it.”

The Bishop shaded his eyes with his hand.  It seemed cruel to look at Rachel, as it is cruel to watch a man drown.

“And how do you know he did draw it?” he said.

“It seems Lord Newhaven left his wife a letter, which she has only just received, telling her so.  She brought it here to-day to show me.”

“Ah!  A letter!  And you read it?”

“No,” said Rachel, scornfully, “I did not read it.  I did not believe a word she said about it.  Hugh was there, and I told him I trusted him; and he took the letter from her, and put it in the fire.”