“Lord Dynmore——”
But the peer would not listen. “Who are you, sir? Answer me that question first!” he cried. He was a choleric man, and he saw already that there was something seriously amiss; so that the shocked, astonished faces round him tended rather to increase than lessen his wrath. “Answer me that!”
“I think, Lord Dynmore, that you must be mad,” replied the rector, his lips quivering. “I am as certainly Reginald Lindo as you are Lord Dynmore!”
“But what are you doing here?” retorted the other, storming down the interruption which the archdeacon would have effected. “That is what I want to know. Who made you rector of Claversham?”
“The bishop, my lord,” answered the young man sternly.
“Ay, but on whose presentation?”
“On yours.”
“On mine?”
“Most assuredly,” replied the clergyman doggedly—“as the archdeacon here, who indicted me, can bear witness.”
“It is false!” Lord Dynmore almost screamed. He turned to the panic-stricken listeners, who had instinctively grouped themselves round the two, and appealed to them. “I presented a man nearly thrice his age, do you hear!—a man of sixty. As for this—this Reginald Lindo, I never heard of him in my life! Never! If he had letters of presentation, I did not give them to him.”