Vincent had shaken hands with his friend at the door, and hurried past, saying something about losing the train, in order to escape conversation; but, with the vivid perceptions of excitement, he heard the delivery of Phoebe's message, and saw the complacence with which the Homerton man regarded the invitation which had anticipated his arrival. The young Nonconformist had enough to think of as he took his way once more to the railway, and tea at Mrs. Tozer's was anything but attractive to his own fancy; yet in the midst of his wretchedness he could not overcome the personal sense of annoyance which this trifling incident produced. It came like a prick of irritating pain, to aggravate the dull horror which throbbed through him. He despised himself for being able to think of it at all, but at the same time it came back to him, darting unawares again and again into his thoughts. Little as he cared for the entertainments and attention of his flock, he was conscious of a certain exasperation in discovering their eagerness to entertain another. He was disgusted with Phoebe for bringing the message, and disgusted with Beecher for looking pleased to receive it. "Probably he thinks he will supersede me," Vincent thought, in sudden gusts of disdain now and then, with a sardonic smile on his lip, waking up afterwards with a thrill of deeper self-disgust, to think that anything so insignificant had power to move him. When he plunged off from Carlingford at last, in the early falling darkness of the winter afternoon, and looked back upon the few lights struggling red through the evening mists, it was with a sense of belonging to the place where he had left an interloper who might take his post over his head, which, perhaps, no other possible stimulant could have given him. He thought with a certain pang of Salem, and that pulpit which was his own, but in which another man should stand to-morrow, with a quickened thrill of something that was almost jealousy; he wondered what might be the sentiments of the connection about his deputy--perhaps Brown and Pigeon would prefer that florid voice to his own--perhaps Phoebe might find the substitute more practicable than the incumbent. Nothing before had ever made Salem so interesting to the young pastor as Beecher's complacence over that invitation to tea.