“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?”