"it wants rebinding If you value it."
"I shall have it done. And a lot of these books," the rector continued, looking at old Mr. Williams's shelves, "want their clothes renewing. I shall have them all looked to, I think." He had a pleasant sense that this was in his power. The cost of the furniture and library had made a hole in his not very large private means; but that mattered little now. Eight hundred a year, paid quarterly, will bind a book or two.
Had the curate been attending, he would have read Lindo's thoughts with ease. But Clode was pursuing a train of reflections of his own, and so was spared this pang. "Your uncle was an old man, I suppose," he said. "I think I observed in the Clergy List that he had been in orders about forty years."
"Not quite so long as that," Lindo replied. "He was sixty-four when he died. He had been Lord Dynmore's private tutor you know, though they were almost of an age."
"Indeed," the curate rejoined, still with that thoughtful look on his face. "You knew Lord Dynmore through him, I suppose, then, Mr. Lindo?"
"Well, I got the living through him, if that what you mean," Lindo said frankly. "But I do not think that I ever met Lord Dynmore. Certainly I should not know him from Adam."
"Ah!" said the curate, "ah! indeed!" He smiled as he gazed into the fire, and stroked his chin. In the other's place, he thought, he would have been more reticent. He would not have disclaimed, though he might not have claimed, acquaintance with Lord Dynmore. He would have left the thing shadowy, to be defined by others as they pleased. Thinking thus, he got up somewhat abruptly, and wished Lindo good-night. A cool observer, indeed, might have noticed-but the rector did not-a change in his manner as he did so-a little accession of familiarity, which did seem not far removed from a delicate kind of contempt. The change was subtle, but one thing was certain. Stephen Clode had no longer any intention of leaving Claversham in a hurry. That resolve was gone.
Once out of the house, he passed quickly from the churchyard by a narrow lane leading to an irregular open space quaintly called "The Top of the Town." Here were his own lodgings, on the first-floor over a stationer's; but he did not enter them. Instead, he strode on toward the farther and darker side of the square, where were no buildings, but a belt of tall trees stood up, gaunt and rustling in the night wind above a line of wall. Through the trees the lights of a large house were visible. He walked up the avenue which led to the door and, ringing loudly, was at once admitted.
The sound of the bell came to the ears of two ladies who had been for some time placidly expecting it. They were seated in a small but charming room filled with soft, shaded light and warmth and color, an open piano and dainty pictures and china, and a well-littered writing-table all contributing to the air of accustomed luxury which pervaded it. The elder lady-that Mrs. Hammond whom we saw talking to the curate on the day of the old rector's funeral-looked up expectantly as Mr. Clode entered, and, extending to him a podgy white hand covered with rings, began to chide him in a rich full voice for being so late. "I have been dying," she said cheerfully, "to hear what is the fate before us, Mr. Clode. What is he like?"
"Well," he answered, taking with a word of thanks the cup of tea which Laura offered him, "I have one surprise in store for you. He is comparatively young."
"Sixty?" said Mrs. Hammond interrogatively.
"Forty?" said Laura, raising her eyebrows.
"No," Clode replied, smiling and stirring his tea, "you must guess again. He is twenty-six."
"Twenty-six! You are joking," exclaimed the elder lady. While Laura opened her eyes very wide, but said nothing yet.
"No," said the curate. "He told me himself that he was not born until 1854."
The two ladies were loud in their surprise then, while for a moment the curate sipped his tea in silence. The brass kettle hissed and bubbled on the hob. The tea-set twinkled cheerfully on the wicker table, and faint scents of flowers and fabrics filled the room with an atmosphere which he had long come to associate with Laura. It was Laura Hammond, indeed, who had introduced him to this new world. The son of an accountant living in a small Lincolnshire town, he owed his clerical profession to his mother's ardent wish that he should rise in the world. His father was not wealthy, and, before he came as curate to Claversham, Mr. Clode had had no experience of society. Then, alighting: on a sudden in the midst of much such a small town as his native place, he found himself astonishingly transmogrified into a person of social importance. He found every door open to him, and among them the Hammonds', who were admitted to be the first people in the town. He fell in easily enough with the "new learning," but the central figure in the novel pleasant world of refinement continued throughout to be Laura Hammond.
Much petting had somewhat spoiled him, and it annoyed him now, as he sat sipping his tea, to observe that the ladies were far from displeased with his tidings. "If he is a young man, he is sure not to be evangelical," said Mrs. Hammond decisively. "That is well. That is a comfort, at any rate."
"He will play tennis, I dare say," said Laura.
"And Mr. Bonamy will be kept in some order now," Mrs. Hammond continued. "Not that I am blaming you, Mr. Clode," she added graciously-indeed, the curate was a great favorite with her, "but in your position you could do nothing with a man so impracticable."
"He really will be an acquisition," cried Laura gleefully, her brown eyes shining in the firelight. And she made her tiny lace handkerchief into a ball and flung it up-and did not catch it, for, with all her talk of lawn-tennis, she was no great player. Her rôle lay rather in the drawing-room. She was as fond of comfort as a cat, and loved the fire with the love of a dog, and was, in a word, pre-eminently feminine, delighting to surround herself with all such things as tended to set off this side of her nature. "But now," she continued briskly, when the curate had recovered her handkerchief for her, "tell me what you think of him. Is he nice?"
"Certainly; I should say so," the curate answered, smiling.
But, though he smiled, he became silent again. He was reflecting, with well-hidden bitterness, that Lindo would not only override him in the parish, but would be his rival in the particular inner clique which he affected-perhaps his rival with Laura. The thought awoke the worst nature of the man. Up to this time, though he had not been true, though he had kept back at Claversham details of his past history which a frank man would have avowed, though in the process of assimilating himself to his new surroundings he had been over-pliant, he had not been guilty of any baseness which had seemed to him a baseness, which had outraged his own conscience. But, as he reflected on the wrong which this young stranger was threatening to do him, he felt himself capable of much.
"Mrs. Hammond," he said suddenly, "may I ask if you have destroyed Lord Dynmore's letter which you showed me last week?"
"Destroyed Lord Dynmore's letter!" Laura answered, speaking for her mother in a tone of comic surprise. "Do you think, sir, that we get peers' autographs every day of the week?"
"No," Mrs. Hammond said, waving aside her daughter's flippancy and speaking with some stateliness. "It is not destroyed, though such things are not so rare with us as Laura pretends. But why do you ask?"
"Because the rector was not sure when Lord Dynmore meant to return to England," Clode explained readily. "And I thought he mentioned the date in his letter to you, Mrs. Hammond."
"I do not think so," said Mrs. Hammond.
"Might I look?"
"Of course," was the answer. "Will you find it, Laura? I think it is under the malachite weight in the other room."
It was, sitting there in solitary majesty. Laura opened it, and took the liberty of glancing through it first. Then she gave it to him. "There, you unbelieving man," she said, "you can look. But he does not say a word about his return."
The curate read rapidly until he came to one sentence, and on this his eye dwelt a moment. "I hear with regret," it ran, "that poor Williams is not long for this world. When he goes I shall send you an old friend of mine. I trust he will become an old friend of yours also." Clode barely glanced at the rest of the letter, but, as he handed it back, he informed himself that it was dated in America two days before Mr. Williams's death.
"No," he admitted, "I was wrong. I thought he had said when he would return."
"And