Who that has travelled in primitive French districts can fail of knowing these little miracle chapels, their atmosphere, their votive offerings, their sincerity, their tinsel, their pathos? At least a hundred graven memorials on the wall beside the Virgin told the story of simple human hearts that had suffered, believed, of anguished human hopes that had here found fulfilment. Dinah Arbuthnot’s cheeks paled as Marjorie, in a whisper, translated the meaning of the inscriptions. Here a mother recorded her gratitude for her child, a wife for her husband, a daughter for her parent. Here the names were graven in full, here in initials. Occasionally there was one word only, ‘_Reconnaissance_,’ and a date. Dinah’s cheeks paled, her eyes filled. If she were alone, Dinah felt--puritan, heretic, though she were--she would gladly kneel and make her confession, lay bare her sorrow, on the spot where so many stricken and weary human souls had cast away the sad garment of repression before her! Lord Rex Basire’s view of the place and situation continued irresistibly comic. And the faces of his companions, the rose-pink face of Miss Verschoyle not excepted, failed to condemn him for his levity. A heap of pious gifts, testimonials, in kind, from the cured, lay, incongruously, as they had been offered, before the altar of the Virgin. There were crutches, big and small, a child’s reclining carriage, models of ships innumerable, a wooden leg--the stoutest faith might long for an explanation of that wooden leg! Well, reader, with the fair church solemn and hushed, five or six black-clad women telling their beads before the different altars, its only Catholic inmates, Lord Rex, it must be concluded, found the temptation towards practical jocularity too strong for him. Hobbling up to the altar, this humorous little lord stood, with bowed head, with contrite manner, in front of the lily-crowned figure for some minutes’ space. Slowly ascending a step, he next deposited his crutch, a silver and ebony toy, upon the heap of worn and dusty peasant offerings; then walked away with tripping, resonant step, with head joyfully erect, down the western aisle, as who should say, ‘Behold me--a believer, cured.’ Ragged Jean Jacques held his mouth between two sun-blackened hands, showily pantomiming his appreciation of the Englishman’s costly waggishness. The subalterns of the Maltshire Royals tittered aloud. Alas! in a marching regiment, as elsewhere, has not human nature its weaker side? Is not a duke’s son, with two inches of brain, and wit in proportion, a duke’s son, even when he jests? The young ladies with one exception looked about as frigid as Italian snow looks under the kisses of an April sun. The exception was Marjorie Bartrand.