“What! Felton?” the rector exclaimed, coming suddenly upright.
“Yes. There is no doubt he has absconded. Bonamy’s clerk has been after him all day, and has discovered that he begged half-a-crown from your curate, to whom he was seen speaking at the Top of the Town about ten this morning. Since that time he has not been seen.”
“He may turn up yet,” said the rector.
“I do not think he will,” the barrister replied, with a shrewd gleam in his eyes. “But you must not flatter yourself that his disappearance will do you any good. Of course some people will say that he was afraid to remain and support a false statement. But more, I fear, will lean to the opinion that he was got out of the way by some one—you, for instance.”
“I see,” said Lindo slowly, after a long pause. “Then it is the more imperative that I should not dream of resigning.”
“I think so,” said Jack.
CHAPTER XX.
A SUDDEN CALL.
“Kate,” said Daintry, looking up from a lesson book as her sister entered the dining-room a few mornings after the bazaar, “are you never going to see old Peggy Jones again? I am sure that you have not been near her for a fortnight?”
“I ought to go, I know,” Kate answered, pausing by the sideboard, with a big bunch of keys dangling from her fingers and an absent expression in her gray eyes. “I have not been for some time.”
“I should think you had not!” quoth Daintry severely. “You have hardly been out of the house the last four days.”