“We shall have a splashy ride back, I’m afraid,” said Wagram as they regained the road. “No; it has run off rather than soaked in. It won’t hurt us; and you’ll have the sun for your remaining shots.”
After she had taken the chapel and the Priest’s Walk—she must take that, she said—Delia asked, somewhat diffidently, if she could see the ornaments.
“Certainly,” answered Wagram; “only we must get hold of Father Gayle for that, because he has got the keys of all the best things.”
The chaplain was at home, and soon found.
“Been taking our private Zoo, I hear, Miss Calmour,” he said genially as he joined them. “Your second sight of it is not quite so startling as your first, eh?”
In the sacristy—for they did not do things by halves at Hilversea—Delia was lost in wonder and delight at the beauty of the vestments and ornaments, rich and exquisite in texture and design, and she almost had to shade her eyes to look at the great sun-shaped monstrance, blazing with precious stones; but what interested her no less, perhaps, was a splendid old chasuble of Flemish make, rich and full, and displaying a perfect chronicle of symbolism in every detail of its embroidery, which Wagram pronounced to have been almost certainly worn by their martyred relative.
“From that to my boy’s things is something of a skip,” he went on, half opening a drawer, in which lay an acolyte’s dress of scarlet and lace; “only the rascal isn’t over-keen on getting inside them when he’s here—eh, Father? Says he has enough of that sort of thing to do at school.”
“Oh, well, we mustn’t expect a boy to be too pious,” laughed the priest. “I know I was anything but that at his age.”
Delia was interested. It was the first time she had heard Wagram refer to his son, and she was about to question him on the subject when the sound of a door opening, and of voices inside the chapel, caught their attention.
“It’s Haldane and Yvonne,” pronounced Wagram. “Perhaps they’ve come to have a practice.”