And so when she touched upon the matter of his wound, like the blundering fool he was, he must needs let his tongue wag upon a tale which, if no less imaginative than Joseph's, was vastly its inferior in plausibility and had yet the quality of differing from it totally in substance.
"Plague on that dog, your lover, Cynthia," he growled from the mountain of pillows that propped him.

"If he should come to wed my daughter after pinning me to the wainscot of my own hall may I be for ever damned." "How ?" quoth she.

"Do you say that Kenneth did it ?" "Aye, did he.

He ran at me ere I could draw, like the coward he is, sink him, and had me through the shoulder in the twinkling of an eye." Here was something beyond her understanding.

What were they concealing from her?
She set her wits to the discovery and plied her father with another question.
"How came you to quarrel ?" "How?
'Twas--'twas concerning you, child," replied Gregory at random, and unable to think of a likelier motive.
"How, concerning me ?" "Leave me, Cynthia," he groaned in despair.