It was as though Nature had reversed her processes, and had evolved from the overnight butterfly a most business-like grub. There was a pile of letters by the side of Mrs. Yale’s plate when she came down to breakfast. Yvonne had already begun her meal, and the elder woman gave her a slight peck in the region between the eye and the _superior maxilla_, which signified the automatic continuance of her devotion. She flounced into her chair, unfolded her napkin, glanced at her papers, and criticised the bacon at one and the same time. Yvonne glanced at her idly. Instinctively, she had closed all the sound-proof doors of her mind on her stepmother’s entrance. “Bills,” said Mrs. Yale grimly. “We shall have to draw in our horns.” Yvonne had never completely satisfied herself as to what were the horns to which Mrs. Yale invariably referred. If it was the cornucopian horn, it was generally drawn in empty. “Here’s this exasperating broker of mine,” said the elder woman, looking at a long statement of account. “I told him particularly not to sell Long Island Gas until it reached eighty-four--and here he has sold it at eighty-one!” “It is now seventy-six,” said Yvonne, drily. “If you had waited for your eighty-four you might have lost much more money.” She had taken to a study of the Share Market and its report from sheer self-defence. Mrs. Yale opened another letter. It was very short and, apparently, unpleasant. “Good heavens!” said she. Her language at breakfast was generally violent. It was, in a sense, an act of devotion, since it had been acquired from her militant husband, who long since had carried his sword to heaven. “What is the matter? From the bank?” asked Yvonne. Mrs. Yale invariably kept her most violent expletives for the bank. “He says I am eighty pounds overdrawn--will I put this right at once!” Mrs. Yale glared at her unoffending stepdaughter. “It’s absurd,” she said, “ridiculous! Eighty pounds overdrawn! Why, I’ve never heard of such a thing in my life.” Yvonne smiled. She, at any rate, had had this experience before. “I know what it is,” said Mrs. Yale, with sudden decision. “They’ve got one of those wretched horse-racing bank clerks who is robbing the bank. He’s filching my account because he knows I am so careless. I suspected it all along!” “The last time, mother,” said Yvonne quietly, “you thought Martha had been using your blank cheques. Why don’t you fill up your counterfoils, and then you would know how much money you had?” Mrs. Yale offered no reply. She made a further rapid survey of the morning’s post without finding satisfaction. She reserved two obviously private letters for the last. These she opened and read carefully. Then she folded them up, placed them in their envelopes, and slipped them into a bag which hung at her side--for all the world like a sabretache. She scrutinised Yvonne with a long and approving scrutiny. “My dear,” she said finally, “you’ve got to make a good marriage.”