The New Rector

"Yes," she replied soberly. "I am so very sorry. I fear-I mean I regret now, that when you-"

"Asked for advice" – he continued, helping her out with a grave smile. He had taken the great leather-covered easy-chair on the other side of the fireplace, and was sitting forward in it, toying with his hat.

"Yes," she said, coloring-"if you like to put it in that very flattering form-I regret now that I presumed to give it, Mr. Lindo."

"I am sorry for that," he answered, looking up at her as he spoke.

She felt herself coloring anew. "Why?" she asked rather tremulously.

"Because I have come to ask your advice again. You will not refuse to give it me?"

She looked at him in surprise; with a little annoyance even. It was absurd. Why should he come to her in this way? Why, because on one occasion, when circumstances had impelled him to speak and her to answer, she had presumed to advise-why should he again come to her of set purpose? It was ridiculous of him. "I think I must refuse," she said gravely and a little formally. "I know nothing of business."

"It is not upon a matter of business," he answered.

She uttered a sigh of impatience. "I think you are very foolish, Mr. Lindo. Why do you not go to my father?"

"Well, because it is-because it is on a rather delicate matter," he answered impulsively.

"Still I do not see why you should bring it to me," she objected, with a flash in her gray eyes, and many memories in her mind.

"Well, I will tell you why I bring it to you," he answered bluntly. "Because I acted on your advice the other day; and that, you see, Miss Bonamy, has put me in this fix; and-and, in fact, made other advice necessary, don't you see?"

"I see you are inclined to be somewhat ungenerous," she answered. "But if it must be so, pray go on."

He rose slowly and stood leaning against the mantel-shelf in his favorite attitude, his foot on the fender. "I will be as short as I can," he said, a nervousness she did not fail to note in his manner. "Perhaps you will kindly hear me to the end before you solve my problem for me. It will help me a little, I think, if I may put my case in the third person. Miss Bonamy" – he paused on the name and cleared his throat, and then went on more quickly-"a man I know, young and keen, and at the time successful-successful beyond his hopes, so that others of his age and standing looked on him with envy, came one day to know a girl, and, from the moment of knowing her, to admire and esteem her. She was not only very beautiful, but he thought he saw in her, almost from the first hour of their acquaintance, such noble and generous qualities as all men, even the weakest, would fain imagine in the woman they love."

Kate moved suddenly in her chair as if to rise. Then she sat back again, and he went on.

"This was a weak man," he said in a low voice. "He had had small experience; let that be some excuse for him. He entered at this time on a new field of work in which he found himself of importance and fancied himself of greater importance. There he had frequent opportunities of meeting the woman I have mentioned, who had already made an impression on him. But his head was turned. He discovered that for certain small and unworthy reasons her goodness and her fairness were not recognized by those among whom he mixed, and he had the meanness to swim with the current and to strive to think no more of the woman to whom his heart had gone out. He acted like a cur, in fact, and presently he had his reward. Evil times came upon him. The position he loved was threatened. Finally he lost it, and found himself again where he had started in life-a poor curate without influence or brilliant prospects. Then-it seems an ignoble, a mean, and a miserable thing to say-he found out for certain that he loved this woman, and could imagine no greater honor or happiness than to have her for his wife."

He paused a moment, and stole a glance at her. Kate sat motionless and still, her lips compressed and her eyes hidden by their long lashes, her gaze fixed apparently on the fire. Save that her face was slightly flushed, and that she breathed quickly, he might have fancied that she did not understand, or even that she had not heard. When he spoke again, after waiting anxiously and vainly for any sign, his voice was husky and agitated. "Will you tell me, Miss Bonamy, what he should do?" he said. "Should he ask her to forgive him and to trust him, or should he go away and be silent?"

She did not speak.

"Kate, will you not tell me? Can I not hope to be forgiven?" He was stooping beside her now, and his hand almost touched her hair.

Then, at last, she looked up at him. "Will not my advice come a little late?" she whispered tremulously and yet with a smile-a smile which was at once bright and tearful and eloquent beyond words.

Afterward she thought of a dozen things she should have said to him-about his certainty of himself, about her father; but at the time none of these occurred to her. If he had come to her with his hands full, it would certainly have been otherwise. But she saw him poor through his own act, and her pride left her. When he took her in his arms and kissed her, she said not a word. And he said only, "My darling!"

* * * * *

The rich can afford to be niggardly. Lindo did not stay long, the question he had to put once answered, his claim to happiness once allowed. When Mr. Bonamy came in half an hour later, he found Kate alone. There was an austere elation in his eye which for a moment led her to think that he had heard her news. His first words, however, dispelled the idea. "I have just seen Lord Dynmore," he said, taking his coat-skirts on his arms and speaking with a geniality which showed that he was moved out of his every-day self. "He has-he has considerably surprised me."

"Indeed?" said Kate, blushing and conscious, half-attentive and half given up to thinking how she should tell her own tale.

"Yes. He has very much surprised me. He has asked me to undertake the agency of his property in this part of the country."

Kate dropped her sewing in genuine surprise "No?" she said. "Has he, indeed?"

Mr. Bonamy, pursing up his lips to keep back the smile of complacency which would force its way, let his eyes rove round the room. "Yes," he said, "I do not mind saying here that I am rather flattered. Of course I should not say as much out of doors."

"Oh, papa, I am so glad," she cried, rising. An unwonted softness in her tone touched and pleased him.

"Yes," he continued, "I am to go over to the park to-morrow to lunch with him and talk over matters. He told me something else which will astonish you. He has behaved very handsomely to Mr. Lindo. It seems he saw him early this morning, after having an interview with the archdeacon, and offered him the living of Pocklington, in Oxfordshire-worth, I believe, about five hundred a year. He is going to give the vicar of Pocklington the rectory here."

Kate's face was scarlet. "But I thought-I understood," she stammered, "that Mr. Clode was to be rector here?"

"Not at all," said Mr. Bonamy, with some asperity. "The whole thing was settled before ten o'clock this morning. Mary told me at the door that Lindo had been here since, so I supposed he had told you something about it."

"He did not tell me a word of it!" Kate answered impulsively, the generous trick her lover had played breaking in upon her mind in all its fulness. "Not a word of it! But papa" – with a pause and then a rush of words-"he asked me to be his wife, and I-I told him I would."

For a moment Mr. Bonamy stared at his daughter as if he thought she had lost her wits. Probably since his boyhood he had never been so much astonished. "I was talking of Mr. Lindo," he said at length, speaking with laborious clearness. "You are referring to your cousin, I fancy."

"No," Kate said, striving with her happy confusion. "I mean Mr. Lindo, papa."

"Indeed! indeed!" Mr. Bonamy answered after another pause, speaking still more slowly, and gazing at her as if he had never seen her before, nor anything at all like her. "You have a good deal surprised me. And I am not easily surprised, I think. Not easily, I think."

"But you are not angry with me, papa?" she murmured rather tearfully.

For a moment he still stared at her in silence, unable to overcome his astonishment. Then by a great effort he recovered himself. "Oh, no," he said, with a smack of his old causticity, "I do not see why I should be angry with you, Kate. Indeed, I may say I foretold this. I always said that young man would introduce great changes, and he has done it. He has fulfilled my words to the letter, my dear!"

CHAPTER XXVI

LOOSE ENDS

Dr. Gregg was one of the first persons in the town to hear of the late rector's engagement. His reception of the news was characteristic. "I don't believe it!" he shrieked. "I don't believe it! It is all rubbish! What has he got to marry upon, I should like to know?"

His informant ventured to mention the living of Pocklington.

"I don't believe it!" the little doctor shrieked. "If he had got that he would see her far enough before he would marry her. Do you think I am such a fool as to believe that?"

"But you see, Bonamy-the earl's agency will be rather a lift in the world for him. And he has money."

"I don't believe it!" shrieked Gregg again. But, alas! he did. He knew that these things were true, and when he next met Bonamy he smiled a wry smile, and tried to swallow his teeth, and grovelled, still with the native snarl curling his lips at intervals. The doctor, indeed, had to suffer a good deal of unhappiness in these days. Clode, about whom he had boasted largely, was conspicuous by his absence. Lord Dynmore's carriage might be seen any morning in front of the Bonamy offices. And rumor said that the earl had taken a strange fancy to the young clergyman whom he had so belabored. Things seemed to Gregg and to some other people in Claversham to be horribly out of joint at this time.

Among others, poor Mrs. Hammond found her brain somewhat disordered. To the curate's unaccountable withdrawal, as to the translation of the late rector to Pocklington, she could easily reconcile herself. But to Mr. Lindo's engagement to the lawyer's daughter, and to the surprising intimacy between the earl and Mr. Bonamy, she could not so readily make up her mind. Why, it was reported that the earl had walked into town and taken tea at Mr. Bonamy's house! Still, facts are stubborn things, nor was it long before Mrs. Hammond was heard to say that the lawyer's conduct in supporting Mr. Lindo in his trouble had produced a very favorable impression on her mind, and prepared her to look upon him in a new light.

And Laura? Laura, during these changes, showed herself particularly bright and sparkling. She was not of a nature to feel even defeat very deeply, or to philosophize much over past mistakes. Her mother saw no change in her-nay, she marvelled, recalling her daughter's intimacy with Mr. Clode and the obstinacy she had exhibited in siding with him, that Laura could so completely put him out of her mind and thoughts. But the least sensitive feel sometimes. The most thoughtless have their moments of care. Even the cat, with its love of home and comfort, will sometimes wander on a wet night. And there are times when Laura, doubting the future and weary of the present, wishes she had had the courage to do as her heart bade her, and make the plunge, careless what the world, and her rivals, might say of her marriage to a curate. For Clode's rugged face and masculine will dominate her still. Though a year has elapsed, and she has not heard of him, nor probably will hear of him now, she thinks of him with regret and soreness. She had not much to give, but to her sorrow she knows now that she gave it to him, and that in that struggle for supremacy both were losers.

The good wine last. Kate broke the news to Jack herself, and found it no news. "Yes, I have just seen Lindo," he answered quietly, taking her hand, and looking her in the face with dry eyes. "May he make you very happy, Kate, and-well, I can wish you nothing better than that." Then Kate broke down and cried bitterly. When she recovered herself Jack was gone.

If you were to describe that scene to Jack Smith's friends in the Temple they would jeer at you. They would cover you with ridicule and gibes. There is no one so keen, so sharp, so matter-of-fact, so certain to succeed as he, they say. They have only one fault to find with him, that he works too hard; that he bids fair to become one of those legal machines which may be seen any evening taking in fuel at solitary club tables, and returning afterward to dusty chambers, with the regularity of clockwork. But there is one thing even in his present life which his Temple friends do not know, and which gives me hope of him. Week by week there comes to him a letter from the country from a long-limbed girl in short frocks, whose hero he is. Time, which, like Procrustes' bed, brings frocks and legs to the same length at last, heals wounds also.

When a day not far distant now shall show him Daintry in the bloom of budding womanhood, is it to be thought that Jack will resist her? I think not. But, be that as it may, with no better savor than that of his loyalty, the silent loyalty of an English friend, could the chronicle of a Bayard-much less the tale of a country town-come to an end.

THE END