He recalled Hester's look of kindness as they had driven home together on that last Sunday evening from the little mission church on the Esplanade to which she had been eager to take him, and he had thought himself exceedingly complaisant in agreeing, for once, to accompany her to the "unfashionable conventicle," as he called it, where Native Christians, not to speak of Eurasians, sat side by side with the little company of English folk. The preacher that evening was a desperately earnest-looking man with searching eyes and a penetrating voice. He had unfolded to his hearers one of the old promises from the Sacred Book, the promise that to those who turned to Him, God would give back the years the cankerworm had eaten. As the organ-like voice of the gallant pleader for God had fallen on his ear, Alfred Rayner acknowledged to himself that he was giving more heed to a "parson's words" than he had ever done in his whole life. And there had been a soft pleading light in Hester's eyes as they met his, the silent meaning of which he could not mistake. What a pretty picture she had made as she sat with reverent uplifted face, her arm round a bright little English child whose parents had brought her to this evening service! The little maid had been assiduous in offering her hymn-book to the winning visitor, and as a supreme mark of confidence had finally deposited her doll on Hester's knee, and then sat nestling her fair shining curls against her arm. The picture came back to him now, a tableau graven on his memory. Would that a little flaxen head like that were their very own! What a changed man such a pledge of love would make of him! How truly the promise would then be fulfilled on which the preacher had dwelt in eloquent words! Then surely would the years eaten by the cankerworm be given back! But no, the dream was fading. He shivered as a light breeze blew softly through the verandah, and turned his gaze from the starry heavens, muttering bitterly: "The cankerworm has fretted through and through! Old Worsley ain't so far wrong after all. I've got the making of a scoundrel in me. Ha, ha! On the make, am I? Well, I'll give him a sample of my wares by-and-by if Zynool will stir up! I declare this silly fit of introspection has made me quite nervy, or the draughty verandah has given me a chill. I must pull myself together." Having no mind to join the festive gathering again, Rayner crept back to the outer edges of the supper tables, and seeing a magnum of champagne, which he decided was the best recipe for steadying his nerves, he partook eagerly. He then took his stand again in the wide aisle and scanned the ballroom, which was now rapidly emptying. The Governor and his party had retired, though various guests still lingered, but the room was beginning to wear the air of "a banquet-hall deserted." Rayner glanced round furtively for his wife, and presently descried Mark Cheveril in earnest conversation with another civilian.