Having set Dennison to work, Keith next directed his steps toward the commodious house to which the Rev. William H. Rimmon had succeeded, along with the fashionable church and the fashionable congregation which his uncle had left.

He was almost sure, from the name she had mentioned, that Mr. Rimmon had performed the ceremony.  Rimmon had from time to time connected his name with matrimonial affairs which reflected little credit on him.

From the time Mr. Rimmon had found his flattery and patience rewarded, the pulpit from which Dr. Little had for years delivered a well-weighed, if a somewhat dry, spiritual pabulum had changed.

Mr. Rimmon knew his congregation too well to tax their patience with any such doctrinal sermons as his uncle had been given to.  He treated his people instead to pleasant little discourses which were as much like Epictetus and Seneca as St. John or St. Paul.

Fifteen minutes was his limit,—­eighteen at the outside,—­weighed out like a ration.  Doubtless, Mr. Rimmon had his own idea of doing good.  His assistants worked hard in back streets and trod the dusty byways, succoring the small fry, while he stepped on velvet carpets and cast his net for the larger fish.

Was not Dives as well worth saving as Lazarus—­and better worth it for Rimmon’s purposes!  And surely he was a more agreeable dinner-companion.  Besides, nothing was really proved against Dives; and the crumbs from his table fed many a Lazarus.

But there were times when the Rev. William H. Rimmon had a vision of other things:  when the Rev. Mr. Rimmon, with his plump cheeks and plump stomach, with his embroidered stoles and fine surplices, his rich cassocks and hand-worked slippers, had a vision of another life.  He remembered the brief period when, thrown with a number of earnest young men who had consecrated their lives to the work of their Divine Master, he had had aspirations for something essentially different from the life he now led.  Sometimes, as he would meet some hard-working, threadbare brother toiling among the poor, who yet, for all his toil and narrowness of means, had in his face that light that comes only from feasting on the living bread, he envied him for a moment, and would gladly have exchanged for a brief time the “good things” that he had fallen heir to for that look of peace.  These moments, however, were rare, and were generally those that followed some evening of even greater conviviality than usual, or some report that the stocks he had gotten Ferdy Wickersham to buy for him had unexpectedly gone down, so that he must make up his margins.  When the margins had been made up and the stocks had reacted, Mr. Rimmon was sufficiently well satisfied with his own lot.

And of late Mr. Rimmon had determined to settle down.  There were those who said that Mr. Rimmon’s voice took on a peculiarly unctuous tone when a certain young widow, as noted for her wealth as for her good looks and good nature entered the portals of his church.