Nance glanced up at the carved ceiling, supported on foliated corbels. The windows, high up from the ground, were filled with Gothic tracery, but in place of biblical scenes their diamonded panes showed the armorial insignia of generations of ancient Renshaws. There was a raised space at the east end, where, in former times, the altar stood, but now, in place of an altar, a carpenter’s table occupied the central position, covered with a litter of laths and wood-chippings. The middle portion of the chapel was bare and empty, but several low cane chairs stood round this space, like seats round a toy coliseum.
Brand indicated these chairs to his visitors, but neither Nance nor Sorio seemed inclined to avail themselves of the opportunity to rest. They all three, therefore, stood together, on the dark polished oak floor.
On first entering the chapel, Brand had lit one of a long row of tapers that stood in wooden candlesticks along the edge of what resembled choir stalls. Now, leaving his companions, he proceeded very deliberately to set light to the whole line of these. The place thus illuminated had a look strangely weird and confused.
Certain broken flower-pots on the ground, and one or two rusty gardening implements, combined with the presence of the wicker-chairs to produce the impression of some sort of “Petit Trianon,” or manorial summer-house, into which all manner of nondescript rubbish had in process of long years come to drift.
The coats-of-arms in the windows above, as the tapers flung their light upon them, had an air almost “collegiate,” as if the chamber were some ancient dining-hall of a monastic order. The carpenter’s table upon the raised dais, with some dimly coloured Italianated picture behind it, inserted in the panelling, gave Nance a most odd sensation. Where had she seen an effect of that kind before? In a picture—or in reality?
But the girl had no heart to analyse her emotions. There was too much at stake. The rain, pattering heavily on the roof of the building, seemed to remind her of her task. She faced Brand resolutely as he strolled back towards them across the polished floor.
“Linda has told me everything,” she said. “She is going to have a child, and you, Mr. Renshaw, are the father of it.”
Sorio made an inarticulate exclamation and approached Brand threateningly. But the latter, disregarding him, continued to look Nance straight in the face.
“Miss Herrick,” he said quietly, “you are a sensible woman and not one, I think, liable to hysteric sentimentalism. I want to discuss this thing quite freely and openly with you, but I would greatly prefer it if your husband—I beg your pardon—if Mr. Sorio would let us talk without interrupting. I haven’t got unlimited time. My mother and sister will be both waiting dinner for me and sending people to find me, perhaps even coming themselves. So it’s obviously in the interests of all of us—particularly of Linda—that we should not waste time in any mock heroics.”
Nance turned quickly to her betrothed. “You’ll hear all we say, Adrian, but if it makes things easier, perhaps—”