Raynier had answered one or two inquiries after his "bicycle accident"-- Cynthia having deftly contrived to let it be understood, though not in so many words, that such was the nature of his mishap--and they were re-entering the garden gate. Suddenly she said,-- "Where's your stick, Herbert? The malacca one. Why, you haven't used it at all this time." It was all up now, he thought. As a matter of fact his main reason for endeavouring to avoid going to church that morning was that it would be one opportunity the less for her to miss that unlucky article. "No, I haven't. The fact is I've lost it." "Lost it? Oh, Herbert!" She looked so genuinely hurt that he felt almost guilty. "Yes. I'm awfully sorry, Cynthia. I wouldn't have lost it for anything, but even as it is I'm sure to get it back again. I'm having inquiries made, and offering rewards, in short doing all I can do. It'll turn up again. I'm certain of that." "But--how did you lose it, and where?" He told her how; that being a detail he had purposely omitted in previous narration of the incident. It was but frowningly received. "I didn't think you would attach so little value to anything _I_ had given you, and yet I might have known you better." What is there about the English Sunday atmosphere that is apt to render contentious people more quarrelsome still, and those not naturally contentious--well, a little prickly? Raynier felt his patience ebbing. She was very unreasonable over the matter, and, really--she was quite old enough to have more sense. "I don't think you're altogether fair to me, Cynthia," he answered, his own tone getting rather short. "The thing was unavoidable, you see. Unless you mean you would rather the man's brains had been knocked out by that bestial mob than that I should have given him some means of defending himself. I value the stick immensely, and am doing all I can to recover it, but I should have thought even you would hardly have valued it at something beyond the price of a man's life." "Only a blackamoor's," she retorted, now white and tremulous with anger. "Sorry I can't agree with you," he answered shortly, for he was thoroughly disgusted. "I have seen rather too much of that sort of `blackamoor,' as you so elegantly term it, not to recognise that he, like ourselves, has his place and use in his own part of the world. I repeat, I am as sorry as you are the stick should have been lost, but I should have thought that, under the circumstances, no woman--with the feelings of a woman--would have held me to blame." "That's right. Sneer at me; it's so manly," she retorted, having reached the tremulous point of rage. "But why didn't you tell me of it at first? Rather underhand, wasn't it?"