“He seemed well when I saw him last,” replied Hodder.

“He’s a wonderful man; the amount of work he accomplishes without apparent effort is stupendous.”  Mrs. Constable cast what seemed a tentative glance at the powerful head, and handed him his tea.  “I wanted to talk to you about Gertrude,” she said.

He looked unenlightened.

“About my daughter, Mrs. Warren.  She lives in New York, you know —­on Long Island.”

Then he had remembered something he had heard.

“Yes,” he said.

“She met you, at the Fergusons’, just for a moment, when she was out here last autumn.  What really nice and simple people the Fergusons are, with all their money!”

“Very nice indeed,” he agreed, puzzled.

“I have been sorry for them in the past,” she went on evenly.  “They had rather a hard time—­perhaps you may have heard.  Nobody appreciated them.  They were entombed, so to speak, in a hideous big house over on the South Side, which fortunately burned down, and then they bought in Park Street, and took a pew in St. John’s.  I suppose the idea of that huge department store was rather difficult to get used to.  But I made up my mind it was nonsense to draw the line at department stores, especially since Mr. Ferguson’s was such a useful and remarkable one, so I went across and called.  Mrs. Ferguson was so grateful, it was almost pathetic.  And she’s a very good friend—­she came here everyday when Genevieve had appendicitis.”

“She’s a good woman,” the rector said.

“And Nan,—­I adore Nan, everybody adores Nan.  She reminds me of one of those exquisite, blue-eyed dolls her father imports.  Now if I were a bachelor, Mr. Hodder—!” Mrs. Constable left the rest to his imagination.

He smiled.

“I’m afraid Miss Ferguson has her own ideas.”  Running through Hodder’s mind, a troubled current, were certain memories connected with Mrs. Warren.  Was she the divorced daughter, or was she not?

“But I was going to speak to you about Gertrude.  She’s had such a hard time, poor dear, my heart has bled for her.”  There was a barely perceptible tremor in Mrs. Constable’s voice.  “All that publicity, and the inevitable suffering connected with it!  And no one can know the misery she went through, she is so sensitive.  But now, at last, she has a chance for happiness—­the real thing has come.”

“The real thing!” he echoed.

“Yes.  She’s going to marry a splendid man, Eldridge Sumner.  I know the family well.  They have always stood for public spirit, and this Mr. Summer, although he is little over thirty, was chairman of that Vice Commission which made such a stir in New York a year ago.  He’s a lawyer, with a fine future, and they’re madly in love.  And Gertrude realizes now, after her experience, the true values in life.  She was only a child when she married Victor Warren.”

“But Mr. Warren,” Hodder managed to say, “is still living.”