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.”