And now she was gone, this lady who had saved him from countless small annoyances, who had given him self-esteem and a kind of social backbone.  He stared into the darkness.  Where was money to come from—­those miserable fifteen pounds, for example?  What would happen?

He almost decided upon praying, only he could not think of appropriate words in which to appeal for this loan; it might seem to the Deity a contemptuously small sum, not worth bothering the angels about.  On the other hand he dared not apply for more than he actually needed—­not to that quarter, at least—­for fear of being found out.  He was always being found out, even by his earthly creditors.  Besides, there lingered at the back of his mind all the time certain doubts as to the efficacy of applying to God for money or anything else.  The whole thing might be a farce.  He remembered, with pain and grief, that he had already on several occasions tried the prayer-system, like most other systems.  And alas, the results had invariably been nil. . . .

A visit from His Reverence the parroco was announced.

This heroic priest, accompanied by two acolytes bearing torches, had braved the downpour of ashes.  He never shirked his duty.  It was his duty that morning to confer with Mr. Parker anent the delayed funeral and other painfully material matters.  For the deceased lady had not deserted the creed of her fathers; she was an ardent Catholic—­so ardent that she professed great pain at her stepbrother’s alien leanings and had taken considerable trouble to convert him to her own way of thinking.  She used to say, in her flowery language, that his contumacious attitude towards the true Faith gnawed at her vitals—­meaning, presumably, that it annoyed her.  Often she pointed out how many social and other advantages they would gain—­living in a Catholic country—­if he, too, could bring himself to enter the field of believers.  In vain!  The Commissioner had a knack of being ultra-protestant on such occasions.

Not that he greatly cared to what Church he belonged.  But if nobody made it worth his while—­why, he remained an Englishman.  He knew perfectly well that the parroco, his lady’s confessor, was anxious to do something in the proselytizing line which might lower the prestige of Don Francesco.  And he was clever enough to realize that, by embracing Catholicism at Torquemada’s hands, he, the Official Representative of Nicaragua, would be putting a feather in the priest’s cap.  He was not going to put a feather in anybody’s cap—­not for nothing.  It was not good enough.  Some strong leader of nations had once remarked, “Every man his price.”  Mr. Parker liked that phrase; he was deeply convinced of its veracity.  He also had his price, and once, in a moment of extreme financial embarrassment, he had delighted his stepsister by announcing that he was prepared to consider the question of conversion.  He then named his price.  It was a condition not to be expressed by such terms as a gratified church might have been able to concede—­by some elevation to a higher sphere of influence or other worldly favour; it was a figure baldly commercial, expressible, that is, in pounds, shillings and pence.