tion. The modulations of her voice
revealed again the searching, inquisitive spirit within her, and his
responded to the intensity of the interest in Mr. Bentley.

"Begin anywhere."

"Anywhere?" he repeated, seeking to gain time.

"Yes--anywhere," she said impatiently.

"Well, he lives in Dalton Street, if you recall what kind of a place
that is" (she nodded), "and he is known from one end of it to the
other."

"I see what he is--he is the most extraordinary person I have ever
known. Just to talk to him gives one such a queer feeling of--of
dissatisfaction with one's self, and seeing him once more seems to have
half revived in me a whole series of dead memories. And I have been
trying to think, but it is all so tantalizing. There is some mystery
about him," she insisted. "He disappeared suddenly, and my mother never
mentioned him but once afterward, but other persons have spoken of him
since--I forget who. He was so well known, and he used to go to St.
John's."

"Yes, he used to go to St. John's."

"What happened to him--do you know? The reason he stopped coming to our
house was some misunderstanding with my father, of course. I am positive
my mother never changed her feelings toward him."

"I can only tell you what he has told me, which is all I
know--authoritatively," Hodder replied. How could he say to her that her
father had ruined Mr. Bentley? Indeed, with a woman of her fearlessness
and honesty--and above all, her intuition,--he felt the cruelty of his
position keenly. Hodder did not relish half truths; and he felt that,
however scant his intercourse in the future might be with Alison Parr,
he would have liked to have kept it on that basis of frankness in which
it had begun. But the exact stage of disillusionment she had reached in
regard to Eldon Parr was unknown to him, and he feared that a further
revelation might possibly sever the already precarious tie between
father and daughter.

He recounted, therefore, that Mr. Bentley had failed; and how he had
before that given much of his estate away in charity, how he had been
unable to keep his pew in St. John's, and had retired to the house in
Dalton Street.

For some moments after he had finished Alison did not reply.

"What is his number in Dalton Street?" she asked.

Hodder informed her.

He could not read in her face whether she suspected that he could have
told her more. And in spite of an inordinate, human joy in being again
in her presence,