rd her father, and his finding her
in the company, of all persons, of Mr. Bentley. Unuttered queries
pressed on the minds of both.

"Tell me about Mr. Bentley," she said.

Hodder hesitated.

"I scarcely know where to begin," he replied, yet smiling at the
characteristic abruptness of her question. 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.