The doctor nodded.

“Poor woman!” he said unexpectedly.  “Will you be good enough to let Mr:  Parr know that I will see him at his house, to-night?” he added, as he took his departure.

IV

Sally Grower went out with the physician, and it was Mr. Bentley who answered the question in the rector’s mind, which he hesitated to ask.

“Mr. Parr must come here,” he said.

As the rector turned, mechanically, to pick up his hat, Mr. Bentley added

“You will come back, Hodder?”

“Since you wish it, sir,” the rector said.

Once in the street, he faced a predicament, but swiftly decided that the telephone was impossible under the circumstances, that there could be no decent procedure without going himself to Park Street.  It was only a little after ten.  The electric car which he caught seemed to lag, the stops were interminable.  His thoughts flew hither and thither.  Should he try first to see Alison?  He was nearest to her now of all the world, and he could not suffer the thought of her having the news otherwise.  Yes, he must tell her, since she knew nothing of the existence of Kate Marcy.

Having settled that,—­though the thought of the blow she was to receive lay like a weight on his heart,—­Mr. Bentley’s reason for summoning Eldon Parr to Dalton Street came to him.  That the feelings of Mr. Bentley towards the financier were those of Christian forgiveness was not for a moment to be doubted:  but a meeting, particularly under such circumstances, could not but be painful indeed.  It must be, it was, Hodder saw, for Kate Marcy’s sake; yes, and for Eldon Parr’s as well, that he be given this opportunity to deal with the woman whom he had driven away from his son, and ruined.

The moon, which had shed splendours over the world the night before, was obscured by a low-drifting mist as Hodder turned in between the ornamental lamps that marked the gateway of the Park Street mansion, and by some undiscerned thought—­suggestion he pictured the heart-broken woman he had left beside the body of one who had been heir to all this magnificence.  Useless now, stone and iron and glass, pictures and statuary.  All the labour, all the care and cunning, all the stealthy planning to get ahead of others had been in vain!  What indeed were left to Eldon Parr!  It was he who needed pity,—­not the woman who had sinned and had been absolved because of her great love; not the wayward, vice-driven boy who lay dead.  The very horror of what Eldon Parr was now to suffer turned Hodder cold as he rang the bell and listened for the soft tread of the servant who would answer his summons.

The man who flung open the door knew him, and did not conceal his astonishment.

“Will you take my card to Miss Parr,” the rector said, “if she has not retired, and tell her I have a message?”

“Miss Parr is still in the library, sir.”