Chapter 21

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."

"Yes," he replied, in a husky whisper. But he rallied himself with an effort and asked, "What of him?" in a clear and steady voice.

"Mr. Ridley had been intemperate before coming to the city, but after settling here he kept himself free from his old bad habits, and was fast regaining the high position he had lost. I met his wife a number of times. She was a very superior woman; and the more I saw of her, the more I was drawn to her. We sent them cards for our party last winter. Mrs. Ridley was sick and could not come. Mr. Ridley came, and--and--" Mrs. Birtwell lost her voice for a moment, then added: "You know what I would say. We put the cup to his lips, we tempted him with wine, and he fell."

Mrs. Birtwell covered her face with her hands. A few strong sobs shook her frame.

"He fell," she added as soon as she could recover herself," and still lies, prostrate and helpless, in the grasp of a cruel enemy into whose power we betrayed him."

"But you did it ignorantly," said Mr. Elliott.

"There was no intention on your part to betray him. You did not know that your friend was his deadly foe."

"My friend?" queried Mrs. Birtwell. She did not take his meaning.

"The wine, I mean. While to you and me it may be