“Yes, it’s not pretty,” admitted Garth.  “The mouth has a sort of malevolent leer, hasn’t it?”

“It has, indeed.  One can hardly believe that it is just a natural formation.”

“It’s always a hotly debated point whether the devil and his hood are purely the work of nature or not.  My own impression is that to a certain extent they are, but that someone—­centuries ago—­being struck by the resemblance of the rock to a human face, added a few touches to complete the picture.”

“Well, whoever did it must have had a bizarre imagination to perpetuate such a thing.”

“The handiwork—­if handiwork it is—­is attributed to Friar Anselmo—­the Spanish monk who broke his vows and escaped to Monkshaven, you know.”

Sara looked interested.

“No, I don’t know,” she said.  “Tell me about him.  He sounds quite exciting.”

“You don’t meant to say no one has enlightened you as to the gentleman whose exploit gave the town its name of Monkshaven?”

“No.  I’m afraid my education as far as local history is concerned has been shamefully neglected.  Do make good the deficiencies”—­smiling.

Garth laughed a little.

“Very well, I will.  I always have a kind of fellow-feeling for Friar Anselmo.  But I propose we investigate the tea-basket first.”

They established themselves beneath the shelter of a big boulder, Garth first spreading a rug which he had brought from the boat for Sara to sit on.  Then he unstrapped the tea-basket, and it became evident either that Mrs. Judson had a genius for assembling together the most fascinating little cakes and savoury sandwiches, accompanied by fragrant tea, hot from a thermos flask, or else that she had acted under instructions from some one to whom the cult of afternoon tea as sublimated by Rumpelmayer was not an unknown quantity.  Sara, sipping her tea luxuriously, decided in favour of the latter explanation.

“For a confirmed misogynist,” she observed later on, when, the feast over, he was repacking the basket, “you have a very complete understanding of a woman’s weakness for tea.”

“It’s a case of cause and effect.  A misogynist”—­caustically—­“is the product of a very complete understanding of most feminine weaknesses.”

Sara’s slender figure tautened a little.

“Do you think,” she said, speaking a little indignantly, “that it is quite nice of you to invite me out to a picnic and then to launch remarks of that description at my head?”

“No, I don’t,” he acknowledged bluntly.  “It’s making you pay some one else’s bill.”  His lean brown hand closed suddenly over hers.  “Forgive me, Sara!”

The abrupt intensity of his manner was out of all proportion to the merely surface friction of the moment; and Sara, sensing something deeper and of more significance behind it, hurriedly switched the conversation into a less personal channel.

“Very well,” she said lightly, disengaging her hand.  “I’ll forgive you, and you shall tell me about Friar Anselmo.”  She lifted her eyes to the leering, sinister face that protruded from the Devil’s Hood.  “As, presumably, from his choice of a profession, he, too, had no love for women, you ought to enjoy telling his story,” she added maliciously.