While Joyce was straining his eyes through the darkness for the last sight of land and eating out his heart in bitter regrets, Yvonne was busily engaged at Fulminster in rehearsing for the next day’s concert. She had spent four days at Fulminster, the guest of Mrs. Winstanley, and found herself somewhat lost among the very decorous society of which Canon Chisely was a leading member. And while she was scanning the social heavens in half pathetic search of her bearings, Joyce’s letters had arrived, with their tidings of catastrophe and exile. So, while there was a smile on her lip for the Canon and his friends, there was a tear in her eye for Joyce. His humiliation and her failure as fairy godmother brought her a pang of disappointment. She felt very tenderly towards Joyce. In her imagination, too, Africa was a dreadful place, made up of deserts, lions, and ferocious negroes in a state of nudity.

If she had seen him before he started, she might have dissuaded him from encountering such discomforts. She thought of this tearfully in the intervals that Fulminster affairs allowed her for reflection.

She was staying with Mrs. Winstanley. Now Mrs. Winstanley was the leading social authority in Fulminster. She was a distant cousin of Canon Chisely. In fact, she was an infinite number of irreproachable things. Mothers came to her as a matrimonial oracle. The Mayor consulted her on ticklish questions of civic etiquette. The affairs of the parish were in her hands. Although she inhabited a well-appointed house of her own, she superintended the domestic arrangements of the Rectory; and performed all the duties of hostess for her cousin when he entertained. Thus, parochially and socially she was invaluable to the Canon—his right-hand woman, one who could share his dignity, and, by so doing, add to its impressiveness. If he had been called upon to write her epitaph, he would have carved upon the stone, “Here lies a woman of sense.” Now, when a responsibly placed and grave bachelor of three-and-forty holds that opinion of a woman of his own years, and consults her in all his concerns, the result is not difficult to imagine. Cousin Emmeline ruled the Rectory, with exquisite tact it is true—for if there was one of her peculiar and original virtues of which she made a speciality, it was tact—but yet her influence was paramount.

When the Canon had come to her with a request to invite Madame Yvonne Latour to stay with her, she had elevated polite eyebrows.

“Whoever heard of such a thing!”

“It seems simple,” said the Canon. “I can’t invite her to my own house, so I beg you to invite her to yours.”

“You are not going to do this for all the professionals engaged at the festival?”

“Of course not,” answered the Canon; “who is suggesting anything so absurd?”

“Then why make an exception of Madame Latour, who is not even singing the leading parts?”

“She is very delicate and requires comforts,” he replied. “If she is not taken care of, she may not be able to sing at all. Besides, it is my particular desire, Emmeline. I assume the privilege of expressing it to you.”

“I take it she is a very great friend of yours?”

“A very great friend,” said the Canon.

Mrs. Winstanley reviewed many unpleasant possibilities. Certain weaknesses becoming apparent in her own impregnable position strongly tempted her to refuse. She bit her lip and looked at her manicured finger-nails.

“Come, you’re a woman of sense,” added the Canon, after a pause.

The tribute turned the tide of her judgment. She was a woman of sense. How absurd of her to have forgotten. An ironical smile played on her lips and lurked in her steel-grey eyes.

“You want to present Madame Latour to Fulminster society, Everard, with whatever advantages may be attached to my chaperonage?”

“Precisely,” said the Canon.

“Well, I will send the invitation. But will she accept it?”

“I ’ll see about that,” he replied briskly. “I am deeply indebted to you, Emmeline.”

She smiled, shook hands and followed him, with a word of parting, to the door. Then as soon as it was shut upon him, she stamped her foot and walked across the room, with an exclamation of impatience.

“I wonder what kind of a fool he is going to make of himself!”

She soon saw. One is not a woman of sense for nothing. On the eve of the Festival, which was being held for the purpose of raising funds for the restoration of the old Abbey church, of which the Canon was rector, he gave a consecrating dinner-party.

The Bishop of the diocese, who was staying at the Rectory, was there; Sir Joshua and Lady Santyre, and others of the high and solemn world of Fulminster. Yet the Canon, with a high-bred tact, delicately conveyed the impression that Madame Latour was the guest of the evening. Mrs. Winstanley kept eyes and ears on the alert. There was much talk of the Festival. On the morrow the “Elijah” was to be given, with Madame Latour in the contralto part. The Canon was solicitous as to her voice, beamed with pleasure when she offered, in her sweet, simple way to sing to his guests, and stood behind her as she sung, with what, in Mrs. Winstanley’s eyes, appeared an exasperating expression of fatuity.

A little later in the evening, a young girl, Sophia Wilmington, went up to him with the charming insolence of youth.

“Why did n’t you tell us she was so sweet? I ’ve fallen head over ears in love with her.” The Canon smiled, bowed, and delivered himself of this extraordinary speech:—

“My dear Sophia, next to falling in love with me, myself, you could not give me greater pleasure.”

“She is so lovely,” said the girl.

“A chance for a medallion,” said the Canon. Miss Wilmington had a pretty taste in medallion painting.

“Oh, I couldn’t get her colouring; but I should love to try—and her voice. To me, any one with a gift like that seems above ordinary mortals. You see I am quite ready to worship your angel.”

“My angel?” said the Canon, sharply.

Mrs. Winstanley, who was close by, discussing the Engadine with the Bishop, did not lose a word of the above conversation. At his last exclamation, she shot a swift side glance which caught the momentary confusion and flush on the Canon’s face. She was quite certain now of the sort of fool he was going to make of himself.

Meanwhile, the girl broke into a gay laugh.

“It did sound funny. I meant the angel in the ‘Elijah.’”

“Oh,” said the Canon, “I was forgetting the ‘Elijah.’”

Mrs. Winstanley resolved at least to say a warning word. Before she left, she managed to have a few words with him.

“I hope you are keeping your eyes very wide open, Everard,” she said, in a whisper.

The Canon took her literally and so regarded her. But she smiled and put her hand on his sleeve.

“She is quite charming and all of that, I grant. But she is very much deeper than she looks.”

“Really, my dear Emmeline—” he began, drawing himself up.

“Tut! my dear friend; don’t be offended. You have called me a wise woman so often that I believe I am one. Well, trust a wise woman, and look before you leap.”

“I am not in the habit of leaping, Emmeline,” said the Canon, stiffly.

Mrs. Winstanley laughed, as if she had a sense of humour; and in a few minutes was driving Yvonne homewards in her snug brougham.

But the Canon, after he had performed his last duties as host towards his right reverend guest, sought the great leathern armchair before his study fire and lit a cigar. Emmeline’s words had disturbed him. That is the worst of keeping a consultant cousin—a woman of sense. Her advice may save you from months of regret, but it is sure to cause you bad quarters of an hour. You remember the woman and disregard the sense on such occasions; or vice versa. Hitherto Emmeline had been infallible. The fact annoyed him, and he let his cigar die out, another irritation. At last he rose impatiently, and going to a violin-case, drew from it a favourite Guarnerius fiddle, tenderly wrapped in a silk handkerchief. And then, having put on the sourdine, so as not to disturb right reverend slumbers, he played “O, rest in the Lord,” with considerable taste and execution.

Perhaps it is well that Mrs. Winstanley did not hear him.

The concert began at three o’clock. The new Town Hall was packed from ceiling to floor. Canon Chisely stood up by his seat near the platform and looked around at the great mass of the audience, which included the flower and influence of the county, and then, turning, scanned the serried hedgerow of the orchestra, the crowding terraces of the choir, and the thin line of professionals in front, among whom Yvonne’s tiny figure had just come to make a spot of grace; and he felt a glow of pride. It was all his doing. The dream of many years was in process of being realised—the completion of the Abbey Restoration Fund. Moreover, he had succeeded in developing his first conception of an unambitious concert into a musical event, to be chronicled by critics from the London dailies. He had other reasons, too, for satisfaction, neither professional nor aesthetic.

Yvonne was feeling fluttered and happy. Fluttered, because it was an important engagement. There are very few chances, even for a real contralto, in oratorio music, and her voice was more mezzo. Hitherto she had contented herself with the scraps. If she had known that the “Elijah” had been deliberately selected because it was the one oratorio in which the contralto part not only suited her voice perfectly, but also rivalled the soprano in importance, the fluttering would have been intensified by perplexity. And she was happy, because all the world was smiling on her, particularly Geraldine Vicary and Vandeleur, with whom she was in immediate converse. Vandeleur had been engaged long since by the Canon for the name-part, partly on account of his magnificent bass voice, and partly to please Yvonne. Geraldine Vicary had stepped into a gap caused by the withdrawal of a more celebrated soprano at the last moment. Yvonne was smiling brightly upon Vandeleur. She liked him. He had made no subsequent reference to his declaration of love, and Yvonne, with her facile temperament, had almost forgotten the circumstance. Besides, he had gone back to his old allegiance to Geraldine, which pleased Yvonne greatly.

The conductor stepped to his stand and tapped with his baton. Silence succeeded the buzz of talk and the din of the tuning of fiddles. Three chords from the orchestra, and Vandeleur sang the introduction; the overture, the opening chorus, and then Yvonne took up her part. Singing was her life. After the first bar, she sang spontaneously, like the birds, free from nervousness or self-consciousness. And during her waits the sublime music absorbed her senses. It swept on through its themes of despair, renunciation, revelation, and promise; through all its vivid contrasts—the great trumpet voice of the prophet, the rolling mass of sound of the chorus, the vibrating notes of the messenger—“Hear ye, Israel; hear what the Lord speaketh “—the calm, sweet voice of the angel, telling of peace.

The Canon listened through all with the ear of a musician and the heart of a religious man. But there was a chord in his nature that remained untouched when Yvonne was not singing, and quivered strangely when her voice was raised. It was so pathetically weak, so different in quality from Geraldine Vicary’s powerful soprano, apparently so incapable of filling that vast hall; and yet so true, so exquisitely modulated that every note rang clear to the farthest gallery. The man forgot his three-and-forty years, the strange mingling of worldly wisdom and priestly dignity by which most of his judgments were formed, and he identified the woman with the voice, pure, angelic, irresistibly lovable.

He turned to his neighbour, Mrs. Winstanley, after the “O, rest in the Lord,” his eyes glistening, and whispered, “What do you think?”

“An unqualified success, Everard.”

“I am so glad.”

“You deserve every congratulation.”

“Thanks, from my heart, Emmeline.”

“The Obadiah man is delightful.”

He looked blankly at her, unable to read what lay behind those calm, grey eyes. Then a great comfort fell upon him. The woman of sense had manifested a lack of intuition that could be called by no other name than stupidity. He hugged his knee, delighted. But he made no more references to Yvonne.

The silence following the crash of the last “Amen,” announced the end. It woke him from a dream. He started to his feet with the impulse to seek Yvonne on the platform, but he was immediately hemmed in by a circle of congratulatory friends. As soon as he obtained breathing space, he turned round, to find that she had withdrawn to the ladies’ dressing-room to put on her things. The hall cleared rapidly. Mrs. Winstanley waited for Yvonne, who did not come at once, having a flood of things to tell to Geraldine. The Canon grew impatient. It was getting late, and he had to drive the Bishop home in time to dress for dinner at a great house some distance away. It would be his only chance of seeing Yvonne that evening. At last she came through the side-door and down the platform with Miss Vicary. He advanced to assist them at the steps, and then, after a few courteous words of thanks to Geraldine, who walked on unconcernedly toward the waiting group, found himself alone with Yvonne.

She wore high-standing fur at her throat and a tiny fur toque in the mass of dark hair, and she looked very winsome. Foolish speeches ran in his grave head, but he could not formulate them.

“I hope you are not very tired,” he said, with dignified lameness, pacing by her side, his hands behind his back.

“Not very. My throat is a bit stiff, but that will go off. Well, was I all right?”

“My dear child—” began the Canon, stopping abruptly.

“I was afraid I might let the piece down, you know,” she said, with a serene smile. “I am not a great vocalist, like Miss Vicary.”

“Don’t speak like that,” he said, awkwardly.

“Besides, your voice has a charm that hers can never have.”

“So you are quite pleased with me?” She looked up at him with such trustful simplicity that his rather stern face grew tender with a smile. It seemed as if a glimpse of her true nature was revealed to him.

“You are like a child-angel, asking if it has been good.”

“Oh, what a sweet, pretty thing to say!” cried Yvonne, gaily. “I shall always remember it, Canon Chisely. Now I know I sang nicely. And, you know, it’s almost like being in heaven to sing that part.”

“You called us all there to you,” said the Canon.

Yvonne blushed, pleased to her heart by the sincerity of the compliment. Coming from Canon Chisely, it had singular force. There was an air of strength and dignity about his broad shoulders, his strongly-marked, thoughtful face, and his grave, yet kindly manner, that had always set him apart, in her estimation, from the other men with whom she came into contact. She never included him in her generalisations upon men and their strange ways. His profession and position, as well as his personality, put him into a category where her unremembered father, and Mr. Gladstone, and the great throat-surgeon whom she had once consulted, vaguely figured. She was always conscious of being on her very best behaviour while talking to him.

The Canon glanced at his friends. They were conversing animatedly, as if in no great hurry to depart. So he leant back against the platform and lingered a while with Yvonne.

“You must take care not to catch cold,” he said, after a while. “I believe it’s a horrid evening.”

“Oh, don’t fear. I shall be all right tomorrow,” said Yvonne.

“I am not thinking of to-morrow at all, though any hitch then would be a misfortune, certainly. I am anxious about yourself. Your throat is already relaxed.”

“You mustn’t spoil me, Canon Chisely. I am used to going out in all kinds of weather. I have to, you know.”

“I wish you had n’t. You are far too fragile.”

“Oh, I am stronger than I look. I am tough—really.”

She brought out the incongruous epithet so prettily that he put back his head and laughed.

“If I had any authority over you, you should not play tricks with yourself,” he said, in grave playfulness.

“But you have a great deal of authority over me. I should never dream of disobeying you.”

He leaned his body forward, his hands resting on the platform edge behind him, and looked at her earnestly.

“Do you think so much of me as that?” he asked, in a low voice.

“Why, of course, I think everything of you,” replied Yvonne, innocently. “Don’t you know that?”

An answer was on his lips, but, happening to look round, he caught Mrs. Winstanley’s ironical glance, an off-switch to sentiment. He stroked a grizzling whisker and drew himself up.

“I mustn’t keep the Bishop waiting,” he said.

“Nor I, Mrs. Winstanley.”

They joined the group, where Yvonne received her congratulations and compliments with childish pleasure. In a few moments they separated, and the Canon drove off, regarding the Bishop by his side with uncanonical feelings.

Late that evening Vandeleur was smoking a cigarette in Miss Vicary’s hotel sitting-room. As Yvonne’s friends, they had been dining with Mrs. Winstanley. Vandeleur was charmed with her urbanity, and sang her praises with Celtic hyperbole.

“I should n’t trust her further than I could see her,” said Geraldine. “She hangs up her smile every night on her dressing-table.”

“Just hear a woman, now,” said the Irishman.

“Yes, just hear a woman,” retorted Geraldine, sarcastically. “I suppose you think she loves Yvonne, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. I’m sure she’s thinking how sweet she is this very minute.”

“She would like to be poisoning Yvonne this very minute.”

“Well, I’m blest!” exclaimed Vandeleur, letting the match die out with which he was preparing to light a fresh cigarette. “It takes a woman to imagine gratuitous devilry!”

“And it takes a man to absorb himself in his dinner to the besotting of his intelligence! But I have eyes. And a logical mind—don’t tell me I have n’t. Now, hitherto, Mrs. Winstanley seems to have been the central figure in this wretched little provincial society. Who is, at the present moment?”

“Sure, it’s yourself, Geraldine—the great soprano from London.”

She did not condescend to notice the flattery.

“It’s Yvonne. I bet you she’s the most-talked-of person in Fulminster this evening. And Mrs. Winstanley the sickest. Oh, how dull men are! What is all this Festival, really, but the apotheosis of Yvonne?”

“It’s the canonisation of Yvonne, I should say,” remarked Vandeleur, drily.

Miss Vicary’s expression relaxed, and she leaned back in her chair.

“You’re not such a fool, after all, Van.”

“So I ’ve been told before,” he replied, with a chuckle. “Anyhow, it will be a splendid thing for the dear child.”

“Oh, how can it be? I have no patience with you!”

“That’s obvious,” said Vandeleur.

“Yvonne would give any man her head, if he whimpered or clamoured for it,” Geraldine, rising to her feet, “and then tell you in her pathetic way, ‘but he wanted it so, dear.’ And there isn’t a man living who could be good enough to Yvonne!”

“There I agree with you,” said Vandeleur.

Meanwhile, Yvonne was going to sleep, quite unconscious of the facts that had aroused Miss Vicary’s indignation. The memory of the artistic triumph of the day and the Canon’s generous praise lingered pleasantly around her pillow. But if there was any one man to whom her thoughts were tenderly given, it was the unhappy friend of her girlhood, who was then speeding into exile over the bleak autumn seas.