She also overheard his throaty chortles over the taunt of Mrs. Cabot: “To younger and prettier convictions, you mean, Deacon?”
Alone, Dolores stared dazedly down at the envelope and card she held. Things happened so suddenly, once they began, she thought. Only this morning she had chided herself for discontent with her settled state. Now everything was unsettled again. As she had cried out to the committee, what manner of man dared she trust?
One of them had answered. The card——
Up to the light she held it. Upon it was engraved the name and downtown business address of Deacon Brill himself.
“You’ll come?” he had asked, voice, eyes, billows exuding loving kindness.
Even more urgently she asked herself: “Shall I go?”
Next morning Dolores bought all the papers, determined to learn the worst. Several of the more conservative merely mentioned that the Rev. Dr. Alexander Willard had resigned the pastorate of the Church of All Mankind. One suggested significant detail behind the surprising act. Still another stated that the Eminent Divine would demand an ecclesiastical trial and introduced the name of the young secretary whom he, disregarding a certain premonishing contretemps, had sheltered within his church home.
The most sensational journal of all uncovered a photograph of the young lady in the case and reviewed the lingerie-shop scandal referred to by the discredited clergyman. This was featured beneath the heading:
TOO STRONG FOR
DR. NIMROD’S SPORTING BLOOD
Would the denomination he had served allow his reputation to be charred by the brand he had tried so conscientiously to pluck from the burning? So Rev. Willard was quoted as having demanded in an exclusive interview. Would any fair-minded congregation take, against his, the word of an adventuress who so lately had been the example for a reform movement instituted by one of their most prominent parishioners, Mr. John Cabot? Was he to be blamed that he had assumed the sincerity of All Mankind’s ideals and had sought to make his charity wide as its word? To save himself for sake of future good that he might do, he would reveal, if forced, the overtures toward him of this unholy creature. As a sacred duty he would show his world which of the two was more sinned against than sinning.