A rough-paved village square; green-shuttered houses, sweltering in the afternoon sun; a pair of openwork spires, delicate as lace, dazzlingly white as Caen stone could make them, silhouetted against the burning sky; tattered children with mercenary hands full of wild flowers; a knot of British pilgrims, irreverently loquacious outside the church’s western door; gruesome beggars making exhibition of wounds; honest peasant people; dishonest relic sellers--such were the salient features of La Delivrande at the moment when Marjorie and Dinah descended into its closer air out of the field-smelling, wind-blown road that brought them hither from the coast. ‘We will ask Mrs. Arbuthnot’s opinion, and abide by it,’ cried Lord Rex, coming forward a few paces to meet them. ‘She will be far better versed in this kind of thing than the rest of us. Ought we to carry candles in our hands, Mrs. Arbuthnot, when we seek our cure? There is a candle-stall conveniently opposite, and Miss Verschoyle and I will head the procession as penitents-in-chief.’ ‘Please help to keep Lord Rex in order, Mrs. Arbuthnot. He is really doing and saying the absurdest things!’ Rosie Verschoyle must have been, surely, at the zenith of good temper when she thus addressed that poor Mrs. Arbuthnot! ‘Now, Lord Rex, I command you to drop this talk about candles instantly. Of course the whole business is a ridiculous piece of Popish superstition, still,’ observed Rosie, with a certain largeness, ‘one has one’s ideas. A church is a church. Positively, I will not speak another word to you to-day unless you behave yourself with decorum when we are inside.’ The awfulness of the threat appeared, for the moment, to check Lord Rex Basire’s playful spirits. He made no purchase of candles. Save that he affected a sudden and very marked lameness of gait, he behaved no worse than his companions on entering the church. Guided by ragged Jean Jacques, the English people walked up to a fretted stone screen dividing the choir from the nave. In a small side altar on the left was a doll, clothed in woven gold, unlovely of face, with eyes ‘dreadfully staring,’ with a crown of paper lilies, with a score of rushlights burning before her in a row--La Delivrande.