Not a cloud had appeared on her horizon since the wedding-day, when they had started upon a magic month in Italy, among blue lakes and bluer skies and gorgeous pictures and marble palaces. After that, there had been the excitement of home-coming, the fluttering sweetness of taking possession, the bewildering succession of fresh faces in her drawing-room, the long drives to return calls, and to attend parties in her honour. The new duties interested her. She revelled in an infants’ class at the Sunday school, which she instructed in a theology undreamed of by the Fathers. She sang at local concerts. She dressed herself in dainty raiment to please her husband’s eye. In fact she made a study of his æsthetic tastes from food to music, and delighted in gratifying them. With feminine pliancy she strove to adapt her moods to his. His face became a book which she loved to read when they met after a few hours’ absence; and, according to what she read, she became demure, or gay, or businesslike. In her leisure hours she sang to herself, read French novels, which she obtained in unlimited supply from London, and sought the society of Sophia Wilmington and her brother, who quickly constituted themselves her chief friends and advisers in Fulminster. Often she sat idle and gave herself up to dreamy contemplation of her beatitude. In these moods comparisons would arise between her two marriages, and between the two men. Scenes, almost forgotten during the years of her widowhood, revived in her memory. Phases of present wedded relations brought back vividly analogous phases in the past. The contrast sometimes produced an emotion that seemed too great for self-containment, and she longed to open her heart to her husband. But she dared not. Love might have broken down barriers, but not the grateful, respectful affection she bore the Canon. Besides, beyond one little talk, two years ago, at the house of Stephen’s mother during her last illness, no mention had been made between them of Amédée Bazouge. Man-like, he preferred to dismiss the circumstance from his mind as unpleasant. But the woman found pleasure in remembering, and in using the contrasts to heighten her present happiness. Thus for six months she had known no trouble, and had laughed at her old tremulous misgivings as to her capacity for filling her present position. Suddenly, one afternoon in early June, as they were sitting in the shadow of the old Abbey, cast across half the lawn, the Canon laid down the review he was reading by the foot of his chair, and, deliberately folding his gold pince-nez and thrusting it in his waistcoat, looked at her and said, “Yvonne.” She closed “Le Petit Bob” with a snap, and became dutiful and smiling attention. “I have something to say to you,” he remarked gravely; “something perhaps painful--about certain possible little changes in our lives.” “Changes?” echoed Yvonne blankly.