But, when dinner was over and he was about to take his leave, he happened to pick up, as he moved about the room, a small prayer-book which Lindo had just unpacked, and which was lying on the writing-table. Clode idly looked into it as he talked, and, seeing on the flyleaf “Reginald Lindo, 1850,” took occasion, when he had done with the subject in hand, to discuss it. “Surely,” he said, holding it up, “you did not possess this in 1850, Mr. Lindo!” “Hardly,” Lindo answered, laughing. “I was not born until ’54.” “Then who?” “It was my uncle’s,” the rector explained. “I was his god-son, and his name was mine also.” “Is he alive, may I ask?” the curate pursued, looking at the title-page as if he saw something curious there—though, indeed, what he saw was not new to him; only from it he had suddenly deduced a thought. “No, he died about a year ago—nearly a year ago, I think,” Lindo answered carelessly, and without the least suspicion. “He was always particularly kind to me, and I use that book a good deal. I must have it rebound.” “Yes,” Clode said mechanically; “it wants rebinding if you value it.” “I shall have it done. And a lot of these books,” the rector continued, looking at old Mr. Williams’s shelves, “want their clothes renewing. I shall have them all looked to, I think.” He had a pleasant sense that this was in his power. The cost of the furniture and library had made a hole in his not very large private means; but that mattered little now. Eight hundred a year, paid quarterly, will bind a book or two. Had the curate been attending, he would have read Lindo’s thoughts with ease. But Clode was pursuing a train of reflections of his own, and so was spared this pang. “Your uncle was an old man, I suppose,” he said. “I think I observed in the Clergy List that he had been in orders about forty years.” “Not quite so long as that,” Lindo replied. “He was sixty-four when he died. He had been Lord Dynmore’s private tutor you know, though they were almost of an age.” “Indeed,” the curate rejoined, still with that thoughtful look on his face. “You knew Lord Dynmore through him, I suppose, then, Mr. Lindo?” “Well, I got the living through him, if that what you mean,” Lindo said frankly. “But I do not think that I ever met Lord Dynmore. Certainly I should not know him from Adam.”