When a mine has been laid, and the fuse lit, and the tiny thread of smoke has begun to curl upward, it is apt to seem a long time--so I am told by those who have stood and watched such things--before the earth flies into the air. So it seemed to Stephen Clode. The curate looked to see an explosion follow immediately upon the rector taking the decisive step of turning out the sheep. But week after week elapsed, until Christmas was some time gone, and nothing happened. Mr. Bonamy, with a lawyer's prudence, wrote another letter, and for a time, perhaps out of regard to the season, held his hand. There was talk of Lord Dynmore's return, but no sign of it as yet. And Dr. Gregg snapped and snarled among his intimates, but in public was pretty quiet.

It was noticeable, however, that the rector was invited to none of the whist-parties which were a feature of the town life at this season; and to those who looked closely into things and listened to the gossip of the place it was plain that the breach between him and the bulk of his parishioners was growing wider. The rector was much with the Hammonds, and carried his head high--higher than ever, one of his parishioners thought since a talk she had had with him in the churchyard. The habit of looking down upon a certain section of the town, because they were not quite so refined as himself, because they were narrow in their opinions, or because the Hammonds looked down upon them, was growing upon him. And he yielded to it none the less because he was all the time dissatisfied with himself. He was conscious that he was not acting up to the standard he had set himself on coming to the town. He was not living the life he had hoped to live. He visited his poor and gave almost too largely in the hard weather, and was diligent at services and sermon-writing. But there was a flaw in his life, and he knew it; and yet he had not the strength to set it right.

All this Mr. Clode might have observed--he was sagacious enough; but for the time his judgment was clouded by his jealousy, and in his impatience he fancied that the rector's troubles were passing away. Each visit Lindo paid to the Town House, each time his name was coupled with Laura Hammond's, as people were beginning to couple it, chafed the curate's sore afresh and kept it raw. So that even Stephen Clode's self-restraint and command of temper began to fail him, and more than once he said sharp things to his commanding-officer, which made Lindo open his eyes in unaffected surprise.

Clode began to feel indeed that the position was becoming intolerable; and though he had long ago determined that the waiting-game was the one he ought to play, he presently--in the first week of the new year--changed his mind.

Lindo had announced his intention of devoting the afternoon--it was Wednesday--to his district; and, taking advantage of this, the curate thought he might indulge himself in a call at the Town House without fear of unpleasant interruption. He would not admit that he had any other motive in going there than just to pay a visit--which he certainly owed. But in truth he was in a dangerous humor. And, alas! when he had been ushered along the thickly carpeted passage and entered the drawing-room, there, comfortably seated in the half-light before the fire, the tea-things gleaming beside them, were Laura and the rector!

The curate's face grew dark. He almost felt that Lindo, who had really been driven in by the rain, had betrayed him; and he shook hands with Laura and sat down in complete silence, unable to trust himself to answer the rector's cheery greeting by so much as a word. It was all he could do to answer "Thank you," when Miss Hammond asked him if he would take tea. She, of course, saw that something was amiss, and felt not a little awkward between her two friends; but luckily the rector remained ignorant and at his ease--he saw nothing, and went on talking. It was the best thing he could have done, only, unfortunately, he had to do with a man whom nothing in his present mood could please.

"I am glad you have turned up at this particular moment," Lindo said. "Let me have your opinion. Miss Hammond says that I am pauperizing the town by giving too much away."

"If you are half as generous at our bazaar on the 10th," she retorted, "you will do twice as much good."

"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?"

"I should say that it was very nearly the worst house in the town!" said the curate.

"Indeed! I will speak to him about it."

"I would speak to him about getting drunk, if I were you!" Clode replied with a short laugh. "He is drunk six days in the week; every day except Saturday, when he comes to you and pulls a long face above a clean neck-cloth. He is the talk of the town!"

The rector stared; naturally wondering what on earth had come to the curate to induce him to take that line. He was rather surprised than offended, however, and merely answered, "I am sorry to hear it. I will speak to him about it."

"Who is this person?" Miss Hammond asked hurriedly. "I do not think that I know any one in the town of that name." The subject seemed to be a dangerous one, but anything was better than to leave the curate free to conduct the discussion.

He it was, however, who answered her. "He is a protÉgÉ of the rector's!" he said, with a laugh that was undisguisedly offensive. "You had better ask him."

"He is a servant of Lord Dynmore's," Lindo said, speaking to her with studious politeness, and otherwise ignoring Clode's interruption.

"But why you find him in board and lodging at the Bull and Staff free, gratis, and for nothing," interposed the curate again with the same rudeness, "passes my comprehension!"

"Perhaps that is my business," said the rector, losing patience.

Both men stood up. Laura rose, too, with a scared face, and stood gazing at them, amazed at the storm which had so suddenly arisen. The curate's height, as the two stood confronting one another, seemed to give him the advantage; and his dark rugged face, kindling with long-repressed feelings, wore the provoking smile of one who, confident in his own powers, has wilfully thrown down the glove and is determined to see the matter through. The rector's face, on the other hand, was red; and, though he faced his man squarely and threw back his head with the haughtiness of his kind, his anger was mixed with wonder, and it was plain that he was at a loss to understand the other's ebullition or to decide how to deal with it. There was a moment's silence, which Laura had not the presence of mind, nor the curate the will, to break. Then the rector said, "Perhaps we had better let this drop for the moment, Mr. Clode."

"As you will," replied the curate recklessly.

"Well, I do will," Lindo rejoined, with some hauteur. And he looked, still standing erect and expectant, as if he thought that Clode could not do otherwise than take his leave.

But that was just what the curate had not the slightest intention of doing. Instead, with a cynical smile, he coolly sat himself down again. His superior's eyes flashed with redoubled anger at this, which seemed to him, after what had passed, the grossest impertinence; but Mr. Clode in his present mood cared nothing for that, and made it very plain that he did not. "Will you think me exacting if I ask for another cup of tea, Miss Hammond?" he said quietly.

That was enough to make the rector's cup run over. He did not wait to hear Laura's answer, but himself said. "Perhaps I had better say good evening, Miss Hammond."

"You will not forget the bazaar?" she answered, making no demur, but at once holding out her hand.

There was a faint note of appeal in her voice which begged him not to be angry, and yet he was angry. "The bazaar?" he said coldly. "Oh, yes, I will not forget it."

And with that he took up his hat and went, feeling much as a man does who, walking along a well-known road, has put his foot into a hole and fallen heavily. He was almost more astonished and aggrieved than hurt.

When he was gone there was silence in the room. I do not know whether Laura had been conscious, while the two men wrangled before her, that she was the prize of the strife, and so, like the maidens of old, had been content to stand by passive and expectant, satisfied to see the best man win, or whether she had been too much alarmed to interpose. But certain it is that, when she was left alone with the curate, she felt almost as uncomfortable as she had ever felt in her life. She tried to say something indifferent, but for once she was too nervous to frame the words. And Mr. Clode, instead of assisting her, instead of bridging over the awkwardness of the moment, as he should have done, since he was the person to blame for it all, sat silent and morose, brooding over the fire and sipping his tea. At last he spoke. "Well," he said abruptly, turning his dark eyes suddenly on hers. "Which is it to be, Laura?"

He had never spoken to her in that tone before, and had any one told her that morning that she would submit to it, she would have laughed her informant to scorn. But there was a new-born masterfulness in the curate's manner which cowed her. "I do not know what you mean," she murmured, her face hot, her heart beating.

"I think you do," he answered sternly, without removing his eyes from her. "Is it to be the rector, or is it to be me, Laura? You must choose between us."

She recovered herself with a kind of gasp. "Are you not going a little too fast?" she said, trying to smile, and speaking with something of her ordinary manner. "I did not know that my choice was limited to the two you mention, Mr. Clode, or that I had to choose one at all."

"I think you must," was his only answer. "You must choose between us." Then, with a sudden movement, he rose and stood over her. "Laura!" he said in a different tone, in a low voice, which thrilled through her and awoke feelings and emotions hitherto asleep. "Laura, do not play with me! I am a man. Is he more? Is he as much? I love you with all my being! He cares only to kill time with you! Will you throw me over because he is a little richer, because I am the curate and he is the rector? If so, well, tell me, and I shall understand you!"

It was not the way she had thought he would end. The force, the abruptness, the almost menace of the last four words took her by surprise and subdued her afresh. If she had had any doubt before which of the two men had her liking, she had none now. She knew that Clode's little finger was more to her than Lindo's whole hand; for, like most women, she had a secret admiration for force, even when exercised without much regard to good taste.

"You need not speak to me like that," she said, in gentle deprecation of his manner.

He stooped over her. "Laura," he said, "do you really mean it? Do you mean you will----"

"Wait, please!" she answered, recovering a little of her ascendency. "Give me a little time. I want to think something out."

But time to think was just what he feared--ignorant as yet of his true position--to give her; and his face grew dark and sullen again. "No," he said, "I will not!"

She rose suddenly. "You will do as I ask you now," she said, asserting herself bravely, "or I shall leave you."

He bowed silently, and she sat down again. "Sit down, please," she said to him. He obeyed her. "Now," she continued, raising her hand so as to shade her eyes from the fire, "I will be candid with you, Mr. Clode. If I had no other alternative than the one you have mentioned--to choose between you and Mr. Lindo--I--I should certainly prefer you. No!" she continued sharply, bidding him with her hand to keep his seat, "hear me out, please. You have not stated the case correctly. In the first place--well, you put me in the awkward position of having to confess that Mr. Lindo has made no such proposal as you seem to fancy; and, secondly, there are others in the world."

"I do not care," the curate exclaimed, his deep voice trembling with exultation--"I do not care though there be millions--now!"

She moved her hand, and for a second her eyes, full of a tenderness such as he had never seen in them before, met his. The look drew him from his seat again, but she sent him back to it by an imperious gesture. "I said I would be candid," she continued, "and I intend to be so, though until a few minutes ago I never thought that I should speak to you as I am doing."

"You shall never repent it," he answered fondly.

"I hope not," she rejoined. But then she paused and was silent.

He sat waiting patiently for a while; but, as she still said nothing, he rose. "Laura," he said.

"Yes, I know," she answered, almost abruptly. "But candor does not come very easily, sir, under certain circumstances. Don't you know you have made me afraid of you?"

He showed that he would have reassured her in the most convincing and practical manner. But, notwithstanding her words, she had regained her power and presence of mind, and she repelled him.

"Wait until you have heard what I have got to say," she said. "It is this. I would not marry Mr. Lindo because he is a rector with a living and a position--not though he were six times a rector! But all the same I will not marry a curate! No," she added in a lower tone, and with a glance which intoxicated him afresh--"not though he be you!"

He stood silent, looking down at her, waiting for more. Neither by word nor gesture did he express dissent. It is possible he already understood, and felt with her.

"To marry a curate," she continued in a low voice, "is, for a girl such as I am, failure. I have held my head rather high, and I have stood by and seen other girls married. Therefore to marry a curate, after all, would be an ignominious failure. Are you very angry with me?" she continued quietly, "or do you understand?"

"I think I understand," he answered, with just a tinge of bitterness in his tone.

"And despise me? Well, you must. I told you I was going to be candid, and perhaps it is as well--as well, I mean, that you should know me," she replied, apparently unmoved.

"I am content," he answered, catching her spirit.

"And so am I," she said. "To no one else in the world would I have said as much as I have said to you. To no other man would I say, 'Win a living, and I will be yours!' But I say it to you. Do as much as that for me and I will marry you, Stephen. If you cannot, I cannot."

"You are very prosaic," he replied, lapsing into bitterness again.

"Oh, if you are not content" she retorted.

He did not let her finish the sentence. "You will marry me on the day I obtain a living?" he asked.

"I will," she answered bravely.

She was standing up now, and he too--standing where the rector had stood an hour before. She let him pass his arm round her waist, but when he would have drawn her closer to him, and bent his head to kiss her, she hung back. "No," she said, blushing hotly, "I think"--with a shy laugh--"that you are making too certain, sir."

"Do you wish me not to succeed?" he replied, looking down at her; and it must be confessed the lover's rÔle became him better than nine-tenths of those who knew his dark, rugged face would have believed.

She shook her head, smiling.

"Then if you wish me success," he replied, "you must send me out with some guerdon of your favor." And this time she did not resist. He drew her to him and kissed her thrice. Then she escaped from him and took refuge on the other side of the fireplace.

"You must not do that again," she said, biting her lip and trying to look at him reproachfully. "At any rate, you have had your guerdon now. When you come back a victor I will crown you. But until then we are friends only. You understand, sir?"

And, though he demurred, he presently said he understood.