CHAPTER XXI.
MR. ELLIOTT still sat in a kind of helpless maze when his servant
came in with the card of Mrs. Spencer Birtwell. He read the name
almost with a start. Nothing, it seemed to him, could have been more
inopportune, for now he remembered with painful distinctness that it
was at the party given by Mr. and Mrs. Birtwell that Ridley had
yielded to temptation and fallen, never, he feared, to rise again.
Mrs. Birtwell met him with a very serious aspect.
"I am in trouble," was the first sentence that passed her lips as
she took the clergyman's hand and looked into his sober countenance.
"About what?" asked Mr. Elliott.
They sat down, regarding each other earnestly.
"Mr. Elliott," said the lady, with solemn impressiveness, "it is an
awful thing to feel that through your act a soul may be lost."
Mrs. Birtwell saw the light go out of her minister's face and a look
of pain sweep over it.
"An awful thing indeed," he returned, in a voice that betrayed the
agitation from which he was still suffering.
"I want to talk with you about a matter that distresses me deeply,"
said Mrs. Birtwell, wondering as she spoke at Mr. Elliott's singular
betrayal of feeling.
"If I can help you, I shall do so gladly," replied the clergyman.
"What is the ground of your trouble?"
"You remember Mr. Ridley?"
Mrs. Birtwell saw the clergyman start and the spasm of pain sweep
over his face once more.
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