But what? Clode’s mind reverted first to the discharged servant, and discussed more than one way in which he might be used. There was an amount of danger, however, in tampering with him which the thinker’s astuteness did not fail to note, and which led him presently to determine to leave Felton alone. Perhaps he had made as much capital out of him as could be made with safety. From him the curate’s thoughts passed naturally to the packet of letters in the cupboard at the rectory, the letters which he had once held in his hand, and which he could not but believe would prove the rector’s knowledge of the fraud he was committing. Those letters! Clode, walking up and down the room, pishing and pshawing from time to time, could not disentangle his thoughts from them. The narrow chance which had prevented him reading them before somehow made him feel the more certain of their value now—the more anxious to hold them again in his hands. Were they still in the cupboard, he wondered. He had retained, not with any purpose, but in pure inadvertence, the key which he had mentioned to the rector; and he had it now. He took it from the mantel-shelf, toyed with it, dropped it into his pocket. Then he took up his hat, and was going abruptly from the room when the little servant who waited on him met him. She was bringing up his simple dinner. The curate’s first impulse was to order it to be taken down and kept warm for him. His second, to resume his seat and eat it hastily. When he had finished—he could not have said an hour later what he had had—he took his hat again and went out. Two minutes saw him at the rectory door, where he was just in time to meet the rector going out. Lindo’s face flushed as he saw who his visitor was, and there was more than a suspicion of haughtiness in his tone as he greeted him. “Good-evening,” he said. “Do you want to see me, Mr. Clode?” “If you please,” the curate answered simply. “May I come in?” For answer, Lindo silently held the door open, and Clode passed through the hall into the library. He was in the habit of entering this room a dozen times a week, but he never did so after leaving his own small lodgings without being struck by its handsome proportions, by the grave harmonious color of its calf-lined walls, and the air of studious quiet which always reigned within them. Of all the rector’s possessions he envied him this room the most. The very sight of the shaded lamp standing on the revolving bookcase at the corner of the hearth, and of the little table beside it, which still bore the rector’s coffee-cup and a tiny silver ewer and basin, aroused his spleen afresh. But he gave no outward sign of this. He stood with his hat in one hand, his other leaning on the table, and his head slightly bent. “Rector,” he said, “I am afraid I behaved very badly this afternoon.” “I certainly thought your manner rather odd,” replied the rector shortly. But he was half disarmed already.