"I'm sorry," said Mr. Parr, as the doors swung open and he led the way
into the house, "I'm sorry I can't give you a more cheerful welcome, but
my son and daughter, for their own reasons, see fit to live elsewhere."

Hodder's quick ear detected in the tone another cadence, and he glanced
at Eldon Parr with a new interest . . . .

Presently they stood, face to face, across a table reduced to its
smallest proportions, in the tempered light of a vast dining-room,
an apartment that seemed to symbolize the fortress-like properties of
wealth. The odd thought struck the clergyman that this man had made his
own Tower of London, had built with his own hands the prison in which he
was to end his days. The carved oaken ceiling, lofty though it was, had
the effect of pressing downward, the heavy furniture matched the heavy
walls, and even the silent, quick-moving servants had a watchful air.

Mr. Parr bowed his head while Hodder asked grace. They sat down.

The constraint which had characterized their conversation continued,
yet there was a subtle change in the attitude of the clergyman. The
financier felt this, though it could not be said that Hodder appeared
more at his ease: his previous silences had been by no means awkward.
Eldon Parr liked self-contained men. But his perceptions were as keen as
Nelson Langmaid's, and like Langmaid, he had gradually become conscious
of a certain baffling personality in the new rector of St. John's. From
time to time he was aware of the grey-green eyes curiously fixed on him,
and at a loss to account for their expression. He had no thought of
reading in it an element of pity. Yet pity was nevertheless in the
rector's heart, and its advent was emancipating him from the limitations
of provincial inexperience.