The archdeacon took a turn up the room. “Now,” he said, coming back, “I want to talk to you about another man.”
“Clode?” muttered the rector.
“Well, yes; you have guessed it,” the elder clergyman assented. “The truth is, I am to offer him the living if you report well of him.”
“I do not like him,” Lindo said briefly.
“To be candid,” replied the other as briefly, “neither do I, now.”
To that Lindo for a moment said nothing. The young man had fallen into an old attitude, and stood with his foot on the fender, his head bent, his eyes fixed on the fire. He was passing through a temptation. Here was a brave vengeance ready to his hand. The man who had behaved badly, heartlessly, disloyally to him, who had taken part against him, and been hard and unfriendly from the moment of Lord Dynmore’s return, was now in his power. He had only to say that he distrusted Clode, that he suspected him of being unscrupulous, even that their connection had not been satisfactory to himself—and the thing was done. Clode would not have the living.
Yet he hesitated to say those words. He felt that the thing was a temptation.
He remembered that Clode had worked well in the parish, and that his only offence was a private one. And, not at once, but after a pause, he gulped down the temptation, and, looking up with a flushed face, spoke. “Yes,” he said, “I must report well of him—in the parish, that is. He is a good worker. I am bound to say as much as that, I think.”
The archdeacon shrugged his shoulders once more. “Right!” he said, with a certain curtness which hid his secret disgust. “I suppose that is all, then. Will you come with me and tell him?”
“No,” the rector answered very decidedly, “certainly I will not.”