This time it was he who said “Forgive me.” Unconsciously her influence grew upon him in his lighter moods, as he excluded her from participation in his serious concerns. To win from her a flash other than dutiful he would humour any caprice. Yvonne was too shrewd not to perceive this. His tenderness touched her, saddened her a little. On her birthday he gave her a pair of tiny ponies and a diminutive phaeton--a perfect turn-out. He lived for a week on the delight in her face when they were brought round (an absolute surprise) to the front door. Yet that evening she said, with her little air of seriousness, after she had been meditating for some time in silence, with puckered brow:-- “I wonder if I am quite such a child as you think me, Everard. I should like something to happen to show you that I am a woman.” “Don’t say that, dear,” he replied, contentedly, holding up his glass of port to the light and peering into it--he was a specialist in ports--“such a chance would probably be some calamity.” Yvonne was not alone in noting the true inwardness of the Canon’s course of action. Mrs. Winstanley did so, to her own chagrin. The ponies were as distasteful to her as the beast of the Apocalypse. She was with Lady Santyre, in the latter’s barouche, when she first saw them. Yvonne, aglow with the effort of driving, was sending them down the Fulminster Road at a rattling pace. She nodded brightly as she passed, pointing to the ponies with her whip. “How fond the dear Canon is of that little woman,” said Lady Santyre, her thin lips closing as if on an acidulated drop. “Psha!” said Mrs. Winstanley, with one of her rare exhibitions of temper. “If he were a few years older, it would be senile infatuation! She is beginning to curl him round her finger.” But there was one subject near to Yvonne’s heart on which the Canon was inflexible--Joyce. Often Yvonne had sought to soften him toward the black sheep, but in his gentlest moods the mention of his cousin’s name turned him to adamant. He even resented Yvonne’s helpful friendship before her marriage. On the afternoon that he had passed Joyce on the stairs, he had spoken as strongly to Yvonne as good taste permitted. Now that he had authority over her, he forbade her to hold further communication with the man who had disgraced his name. Finally she abandoned her attempts at conciliation, but pity prevailing over wifely obedience, she kept up her correspondence with Joyce, unknown to the Canon. That is to say, she wrote cheery, gossipy letters now and then to the address she had received from Cape Town, trusting to luck for their ultimate delivery, but receiving very few in return, for Joyce had often not the heart to write.