“No; I wish he had,” he answered. “All the same, I think I am fairly sure of it without the promise.” And then he related to her what the archdeacon had told him as to Lord Dynmore’s intention of presenting the curates in future. “Now do you see, Laura?” he asked.
“Yes, I see,” she answered, looking down and absently poking a hole in the gravel with the point of her umbrella.
“And you are content?”
“Yes,” she answered, looking up brightly from a little dream of the rectory as it should be, when feminine taste had transformed it with the aid of Persian rugs and old china and the hundred knickknacks which are half a woman’s life—“Yes, I am content, Mr. Clode.”
“Say ‘Stephen.’”
“I am quite content, Stephen,” she answered obediently, a bright blush for a moment mingling with her smile.
He was about to make some warm rejoinder, when the sound of footsteps approaching from the house diverted his attention, and he looked up. The new-comer was Mrs. Hammond, also on her way into the town. She waved her hand to him. “Good morning,” she cried in her cheery voice—“you are just the person I wanted to see, Mr. Clode. This is good luck. Now, how is he?”
“Who? Mrs. Hammond,” said the curate, quite taken by surprise.
“Who?” she replied warmly, reproach in her tone. She was a kind-hearted woman, and the scene in her drawing-room had really cost her a few minutes’ sleep. “Why, Mr. Lindo, to be sure. Whom else should I mean? I suppose you went in last night at once and told him how much we all sympathized with him? Indeed, I hope you did not leave him until you saw him well to bed, for I am sure he was hardly fit to be left alone, poor fellow!”
Mr. Clode stood silent, and looked troubled. Really, if it had occurred to him, he would have called to see Lindo. But it had not occurred to him, after what had happened—perhaps because he had been busied about things which “seemed worth while.” He regretted now, since Mrs. Hammond seemed to think it so much a matter of course, that he had not done so; the more as the omission compelled him to choose his side earlier than he need have done. However, it was too late now. So he shook his head. “I have not seen him, Mrs. Hammond,” he said gravely. “I have not been to the rectory.”