But at first there was much admixture of cynicism on Joyce’s side. He laughed aloud, in the bitterness of his heart, at the object he had taken for his bosom friend. It was only later, when he learned the patient, dog-like devotion of the man, that he felt humbled and ashamed at these beginnings. With a draft on a Cape Town bank for the remainder of his capital, and a last regretful letter from Yvonne in his pocket, he left Southampton. And as they steamed down Channel, in the mizzling rain of a grey November day, he leaned over the taffrail and stared at the land of his brilliant hopes, his crime, his punishment, his struggles and his dishonour, with a man’s agony of unshed tears. He was going to begin life anew in a strange undesired country; hopeless, aimless, friendless save for that useless creature who was pacing up and down the deck behind him, still in his ridiculous headgear. He had made no plans. The future to him when he should land at Cape Town was as unknown--as it is to any of the sons of men, did we but realise it. CHAPTER VIII--THE CANON’S ANGEL 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.