“Do, and you’ll keep up the part,” he returned.
Worthingham Church was in close resemblance to a thousand or so other village churches of its size and circumstance, in that it was old and picturesque, and gave forth the same flavour of mould and damp stones. There was the same rustic choir with newly-oiled heads and clattering boots and skimpy surplices, singing the same hackneyed hymns, and the Vicar’s sermon was on the same level of prosiness, not that he could not have done better, but he had long since ceased to think it worth while taking the trouble. But Cynthia Daintree, seated in the front pew, well gowned and tastefully hatted, and withal complacently conscious of the same, was the presiding goddess, at whom the rustics aforesaid never seemed tired of furtively staring—in awe, which somewhat outweighed their admiration—therein well-nigh overlooking the discoloured countenance of her fiancé.
“Cynthia always looks as if she’d bought up the whole show,” pronounced Sylvia, subsequently and irreverently.
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.”