“Or half as much evil!” he said lightly.
“Have it that way, if you like,” she answered laughing.
The curate set his teeth together in impotent rage. They were so easy, so unconstrained, on such excellent terms with one another. When Laura, who was secretly quaking, held out the toast to him and let her eyes dwell for an instant on his, he looked away stubbornly. “Were you asking my opinion?” he said in a voice he vainly strove to render cold and dispassionate.
“To be sure,” said the rector, stirring his tea and enjoying himself. “Miss Hammond is not impartial. She is biassed by her bazaar.”
If he had known the strong passions that were at work on the other side of the tea-table! But the curate had his back to the shaded lamp, and only a fitful gleam of fire-light betrayed even to Laura’s suspicious eyes that he was not himself. Yet, when he spoke, Lindo involuntarily started, so thinly veiled was the sneer in his tone. “Well, there is one pensioner, I think, you would do well to strike off your list,” he said. “He does not do you much credit.”
“Who is that? Old Martin at the Gas House?”
“No, the gentleman at the Bull and Staff!” replied the curate bluntly.
“At the Bull and Staff? Who is that?”
“Felton.”
For a moment the rector looked puzzled. He had almost forgotten the name of Lord Dynmore’s servant. Then he colored slightly. “Yes, I know whom you mean,” he said, taken aback as much by the other’s unlooked-for tone as by the mention of the man. “But I did not know he lived at the Bull and Staff. It is not much of a place, is it?”