"Only once a year hitherto. This ought, strictly speaking, to have been held last Thursday, or Sunday, but we couldn't make it anything like as imposing on either day. We couldn't have got the convent school for one thing, nor such a muster of clergy. They can't conveniently leave their own missions on those days. Now come up to the house. There's `cup' and all sorts of things going; tea, too, if you prefer it--and I can't allow you to break away as you did last time. Where did you leave your bicycle?"--with a glance at her skirt. "I stood it against the chapel railing. Will it be safe there?" "We'd better take it along to make sure." She would not let him get it for her. Someone might detain him if once he left her side. Indeed, she could hardly realise that she was awake and not dreaming. In saying that she had screwed up her courage to come she was speaking the literal truth, and even then would have given up at the last moment but for Clytie, whom, feebly, she had besought to accompany her. "Not I, my dear child," had been the decisive response. "If I were to get into that crowd some kind soul would be safe to pass the word: `Hullo! There's Damages.' Then what sort of show would Damages' little sister have? No, no; you must play this innings off your own bat." But Delia, to do her justice, had resolved in no way to second her sister's great and audacious scheme. It made her feel mean to realise that she had even heard it mooted. Her presence there to-day was not due to any wish to further it, but to a legitimate desire not to let slip so good an opportunity of furthering the acquaintance so strangely begun. "I have never seen a more picturesque sight," she went on as they walked towards the house. "The effect was perfect--the procession moving between these great tree trunks--the avenue all strewn with roses--and all that flash as of gold here and there, and the scarlet and white of the choir boys. And how well they seemed to do it--no fuss or blundering. Did you organise it all, Mr Wagram? You seemed here, there, and everywhere at once." "I generally do master of ceremonies--a very much needed official, I assure you, on these occasions." "So I should imagine. And all those little tots in muslin and white wreaths--even the plainest of them looked pretty. Tell me, Mr Wagram, who was that lovely girl who carried one of the banners? She didn't look as if she belonged to that convent school." "Yvonne Haldane. No, she doesn't." "Is she French?" "There's nothing French about her but her name, unless that she speaks it uncommonly well. She's staying with us--she and her father. The peculiarity about them is that they are rarely seen apart."