PART II.

Produced by Daniel Fromont

Eleanor Frances Poynter is the author of My little lady (1871

novel), Ersilia (1876 novel), Among the hills (1881 novel),

Madame de Presnel (1885 novel), The wooing of Catherine and

other tales (1886), The failure of Elisabeth (1890 novel), An

exquisite fool (1892 novel), Michael Ferrier (1902 novel); and

translator of Wilhelmine von Hillern's The vulture maiden (Die

Geier-Wally) (1876) and Agnès Mary Duclaux (later Mrs James

Darmesteter)'s Froissart (1895).

Two of her novels were translated in French: My little lady

as Madeleine Linders (1873); and Among the hills as Hetty

(1883).

_The Saturday Review_ vol. XXX p. 794 comments _My little lady_ as

follows: "There are certain female characters in novels which

remind one of nothing so much as of a head of Greuze,--fresh,

simple, yet of the cunningly simple type, 'innocent--arch,' and

intensely natural.... 'My Little Lady' is a character of this

Greuze-like kind.... The whole book is charming; quietly told,

quietly thought, without glare or flutter, and interesting in

both character and story,... and, if slight of kind, thoroughly

good of its kind."

COLLECTION

OF

BRITISH AUTHORS

TAUCHNITZ EDITION.

VOL. 1148.

MY LITTLE LADY.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

Thy sinless progress, through a world

By sorrow darken'd and by care disturbed,

Apt likeness bears to hers through gather'd clouds

Moving untouch'd in silver purity.

WORDSWORTH.

MY LITTLE LADY.

_COPYRIGHT EDITION_.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LEIPZIG

BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ

1871.

_The Right of Translation is reserved_.

To

J.C.I.

PART I.

MY LITTLE LADY.

CHAPTER I.

In the Garden.

There are certain days in the lives of each one of us, which

come in their due course without special warning, to which we

look forward with no anticipations of peculiar joy or sorrow,

from which beforehand we neither demand nor expect more than

the ordinary portion of good and evil, and which yet through

some occurrence--unconsidered perhaps at the moment, but

gaining in significance with years and connecting events--are

destined to live apart in our memories to the end of our

existence. Such a day in Horace Graham's life was a certain

hot Sunday in August, that he spent at the big hotel at

Chaudfontaine.

Every traveller along the great high road leading from

Brussels to Cologne knows Chaudfontaine, the little village

distant about six miles from Liége, with its church, its big

hotel, and its scattered cottages, partly forges, partly

restaurants, which shine white against a dark green background

of wooded hills, and gleam reflected in the clear tranquil

stream by which they stand. On every side the hills seem to

fold over and enclose the quiet green valley; the stream winds

and turns, the long poplar-bordered road follows its course;

amongst the hills are more valleys, more streams, woods,

forests, sheltered nooks, tall grey limestone rocks, spaces of

cornfields, and bright meadows. Everyone admires the charming

scenery as the train speeds across it, through one tunnel

after another; but there are few amongst our countrymen who

care to give it more than a passing glance of admiration, or

to tarry in the quiet little village even for an hour, in

their great annual rush to Spa, or the Rhine, or Switzerland.

As a rule one seldom meets Englishmen at Chaudfontaine, and it

was quite by chance that Horace Graham found himself there. An

accident to a goods train had caused a detention of several

hours all along the line, as he was travelling to Brussels,

and it was by the advice of a Belgian fellow-passenger that he

had stopped at Chaudfontaine, instead of going on to Liége, as

he had at first proposed doing, on hearing from the guard that

it was the furthest point that could be reached that night.

Behind the hotel lies a sunshiny shady garden, with benches

and tables set under the trees near the house, and beyond, an

unkempt lawn, a sort of wilderness of grass and shrubs and

trees, with clumps of dark and light foliage against the more

uniform green of the surrounding hills, and it was still cool

and pleasant when Graham wandered into it after breakfast on

that Sunday morning, whilst all in front of the hotel was

already basking in the hot sunshine. He had gone to bed the

night before with the fixed intention of leaving by the

earliest morning train, for his first impressions of

Chaudfontaine had not been cheerful ones. It was nearly

midnight when, with his companions, he had crossed the bridge

that connects the railway station with the hotel on the

opposite side of the stream, and scarcely a light was shining

from the windows of the dim white building before him; he was

very tired, rather cross, and disposed to grumble at the delay

in his journey; and the general aspect of things--the bad

supper, the sleepy waiter carrying a candle up flights of

broad shallow wooden stairs, and down a long passage to a

remote room barely furnished, the uncertain view of a

foreground of rustling poplars, and close behind them a black

silent mass of hill--all these had not tended to encourage him.

But a man must be very cynical, or very _blasé_, or wholly

possessed by some other uncomfortable quality, who does not

feel much cheered and invigorated by morning sunbeams pouring

into a strange bed-room, and awakening him to new scenes and

unexperienced sensations. Horace Graham was neither cynical

nor _blasé_; on the contrary, he was a pleasant-tempered, fresh-

hearted lad of twenty or thereabouts, who only three weeks

before had made his first acquaintance with French gendarmes,

and for the first time had heard children shouting to each

other in a foreign tongue along white-walled, sunshiny,

foreign streets. Three weeks touring in Germany had only

served to arouse in him a passion for travelling and seeing,

for new places and peoples and scenes, that in all his life,

perhaps, would not be satiated; everything was new to him,

everything amused him; and so it happened that, while he was

dressing and studying from his window the view that had been

only obscurely hinted at in the darkness of night before, a

sudden desire came over him to remain where he was for that

day, climb the hills that rose before him, and see what manner

of country lay beyond.

It was still early when, after breakfasting by himself in the

salle-à-manger, he found his way into the garden; no one was

stirring, it seemed deserted; he wandered along the gravel

paths, trod down the tall grass as he crossed the lawn, and

arrived at the confines of the little domain. On two sides it

was bounded by a narrow stream, separating it from the road

beyond; at the angle of the garden the shallow, trickling

water widened into a little fall crossed by a few planks;

there were trees and bushes on each side, and the grassy

garden bank sloped down to the stream. It was very green, and

peaceful and dewy. Horace stood still for a minute looking at

the flickering lights and shadows, and watching the dash and

current of the water.

"_Fi donc, Mademoiselle, tu n'es pas raisonnable_," cries a

sweet shrill little voice close to him, "_tu es vraiment

insupportable aujourd'hui_."

He turned round and saw a child between five and six years

old, dressed in a shabby little merino frock and white

pinafore, standing with her back towards him, and holding out

a doll at arm's length, its turned-out pink leather toes just

touching the ground.

"_Veux-tu bien être sage?_" continues the small monitress with

much severity, "_encore une fois, un, deux, trois!_" and she

made a little dancing-step backwards; then with an air of

encouragement, "_Allons, mon amie, du courage!_ We must be

perfect in our steps for this evening, for you know, Sophie,

if you refuse to dance, M. le Prince will be in despair, and

M. le Baron will put his hand on his heart and cry, 'Alas,

mademoiselle, you have no pity, and my heart is desolated!' "

"Madelon!" cries a voice through the trees in the distance.

"_Me voici, papa!_" she answered, stopping the dancing-lesson

and looking round. As she did so she caught sight of Horace,

and gazed up in his face with a child's deliberate stare. She

had great brown eyes, a little round fair face, and light hair

curling all over her head. She looked up at him quite

fearlessly for a moment, and then darted away, dashing against

somebody who was coming along the path, and disappeared.

"Take care, _ma petite;_ you nearly knocked me down!" cried a

good-humoured voice, belonging to a large gentleman with a

ruddy face, and black hair and beard. "Ah! good morning,

Monsieur," he continued as he approached Horace; "I rejoice to

see that you have not yet quitted Chaudfontaine, as you spoke

of doing last night."

"I have changed my mind," said Horace, smiling as he

recognised his fellow-traveller of the night before. "I think

of staying here to-day, and not leaving for Brussels till to-

morrow morning."

"You will not regret it," said his companion, as they turned

back towards the hotel, and walked on slowly together; "it is

true there is not much here to tempt you during the day; but

numbers will arrive for the four o'clock _table-d'hôte_. In the

evening there will be quite a little society, and we shall

dance. I assure you, monsieur, that we also know how to be gay

at Chaudfontaine."

"I don't doubt it," answered Graham; "and though I don't care

much about dancing----"

"You don't care about dancing?" interrupted the Belgian with

astonishment; "but that is of your nation, Monsieur. You are

truly an extraordinary people, you English; you travel, you

climb, you ride, you walk, and you do not dance!"

"I think we dance too, sometimes," said the young Englishman,

laughing; "but I own that it is walking I care for most just

now--the country about here seems to be wonderfully pretty."

"In fact it is not bad," said the Belgian, with the air of

paying it a compliment; "and if you take care to return in

time for the four o'clock _table-d'hôte_, you cannot do better

than make a little promenade to gain an appetite for dinner. I

can promise you an excellent one--they keep an admirable cook.

I entreat you not to think of leaving for Brussels; and

precisely you cannot go," he added, drawing out his watch,

"for it is just the hour that the train leaves, and I hear the

whistle at this moment."

And, in fact, though they could not see the train from where

they stood, they heard its shrill whistle as it rushed into

the station on the other side of the river.

"So it is decided," said Graham, "and I remain."

"And you do wisely, Monsieur," cried his companion; "believe

me, you will not regret passing a day in this charming little

spot. Do they speak much in England of Chaudfontaine,

Monsieur?"

"Well, no," Horace was obliged to acknowledge, "they do not."

"Ah!" said the Belgian, a little disappointed; "but they speak

of Brussels, perhaps?"

"Oh! yes, every one knows Brussels," answered Graham.

"It is a beautiful city," remarked his companion, "and has a

brilliant society; but for my part, I own that at this season

of the year I prefer the retirement, the tranquillity of

Chaudfontaine, where also one amuses oneself perfectly well. I

always spend two or three months here--in fact, have been here

for six weeks already this summer. Affairs called me to Aix-

la-Chapelle last week for a few days, and that was how I had

the good fortune to meet Monsieur last night."

"It was very lucky for me," said Horace. "I am delighted to be

here. The hotel seems to be very empty," he added. "I have

seen nobody this morning except one little girl."

"But no, the hotel is almost full--people are gone to mass,

perhaps, or are in bed, or are breakfasting. It is still

early."

"That little girl," said Horace--"does she belong to the

house?"

"You mean the little girl who ran against me as I came up to

you just now? No, the _propriétaire_ of the hotel has but one

daughter, Mademoiselle Cécile, a most amiable person. But I

know that child--her father is one of the _habitués_ of the

hotel. She is much to be pitied, poor little one!"

"Why?" asked Graham.

"Because her father--_ah! bon jour, Madame_--excuse me, Monsieur,

but I go to pay my respects to Madame la Comtesse!" cried the

Belgian, as an elderly red-faced lady, with fuzzy sandy hair,

wearing a dingy, many-flounced lilac barége gown, came towards

them along the gravel path.

"At last we see you back, my dear Monsieur!" she cried--"ah!

how many regrets your absence has caused!--of what an

insupportable _ennui_ have we not been the victims! But you are

looking better than when you left us; your journey has done

you good; it is plain that you have not suffered from

absence."

"Alas! Madame," cries the other, "you little know! And how,

for my part, can I venture to believe in regrets that have

left no traces? Madame is looking more charming, more

blooming----"

Horace waited to hear no more; he left the pair standing and

complimenting each other on the sunny pathway, and wandered

away under the shade of the big trees, crossed the little

stream and the white dusty road beyond, and began to ascend

the hills.

"What an ugly old woman!" thought the lad. "She and my friend

seem to be great allies; she must be at least ten years older

than he is, and he talks to her as if she were a pretty girl;

but she is a Countess apparently, and I suppose that counts

for something. Oh! what a jolly country!"

He strode along whistling, with his hands in his pockets,

feeling as if he had the world before him to explore, and in

the happiest of moods. Such a mood was not rare with Horace

Graham in these youthful days, when, by force of a good

health, and good spirits, and a large capacity for fresh

genuine enjoyment, he was apt to find life pleasant enough on

the whole, though for him it lacked several of the things that

go to make up the ordinary ideal of human happiness. He was

not rich; he had no particular expectations, and but few

family ties, for his parents had both died when he was very

young, and except an aunt who had brought him up, and a

married sister several years older than himself, he had no

near relations in the world. He was simply a medical student,

with nothing to look forward to but pushing his own way, and

making his own path in life as best he could. But he had

plenty of talent, and worked hard at his profession, to which

he was devoted for reasons quite unconnected with any

considerations of possible profit and loss. Indeed, having

just enough money of his own to make him tolerably

independent, he was wont to ignore all such considerations in

his grand youthful way, and to look upon his profession from a

purely abstract scientific point of view. And yet he was not

without large hopes, grand vague ambitions concerning his

future career; for he was at an age when it seems so much

easier to become one of the few enumerated great ones of the

world than to remain amongst the nameless forgotten

multitudes; and life lay before him rather as something

definite, which he could take up and fashion to his own

pleasure, than as a succession of days and years which would

inevitably mould and influence him in their course. It is not

wholly conceit, perhaps, which so assures these clever lads of

the vastness of their untried capabilities, that there are

moments when they feel as if they could grasp heaven and earth

in their wide consciousness; it is rather a want of experience

and clearness of perception. Horace Graham was not

particularly conceited, and yet, in common with many other men

of his age, he had a conviction that, in some way or other,

life had great exceptional prizes in store for him; and indeed

he was so strong, and young, and honest-hearted, that he had

been successful enough hitherto within his narrow limits. He

had pleasant manners, too, and a pleasant face, which gained

him as many friends as he ever cared to have; for he had a

queer, reserved, unsociable twist in his character, which kept

him aloof from much company, and rather spoilt his reputation

for geniality and heartiness. He hated the hard work he had to

go through in society; so at least he was wont to grumble, and

then would add, laughing, "I daresay I am a conceited puppy to

say so: but the fact is, there are not six people in the world

whose company I would prefer to my own for a whole day."

He found his own company quite sufficient during all his

wanderings through that long summer's day in the lovely

country round Chaudfontaine, a country neither grand nor wild,

hardly romantic, but with a charm of its own that enticed

Graham onwards in spite of the hot August sun. It was so

green, so peaceful, so out of the world; the little valleys

were wrapped so closely amongst the hills, the streams came

gushing out of the limestone rocks, dry water, courses led him

higher and higher up amongst the silent woods, which stretched

away for miles on either hand. Sometimes he would come upon an

open space, whence he could look down upon the broader valley

beneath, with its quiet river flowing through the midst,

reflecting white villages, forges, long rows of poplars, an

occasional bridge, and here and there a long low island; or

descending, he would find himself in some narrow ravine, cleft

between grey rocky heights overgrown with brushwood and

trailing plants, the road leading beside a marshy brook, full

of rushes and forget-me-nots, and disappearing amongst the

forest trees. All day long Graham wandered about that pleasant

land, and it was long past the four o'clock dinner hour when

he stood on the top of the hill he had seen that morning from

his window, and looked across the wide view of woods and

cornfields to where a distant cloud of smoke marked the city

of Liége. Thence descending by a steep zig-zag path, with a

bench at every angle, he crossed the road and the little

rivulet, and found himself once more in the garden at the back

of the hotel.

CHAPTER II.

In the Salon.

He had left it in the morning dewy, silent, almost deserted;

he found it full of gaiety and life and movement, talking,

laughing, and smoking going on, pretty bright dresses glancing

amongst the trees, children swinging under the great branches,

the flickering lights and shadows dancing on their white

frocks and curly heads, white-capped bonnes dangling their

_bébés_, papas drinking coffee and liqueurs at the little

tables, mammas talking the latest Liége scandal, and

discussing the newest Parisian fashions. The table-d'hôte

dinner was just over, and everybody had come out to enjoy the

air, till it was time for the dancing to begin.

The glass door leading into the passage that ran through the

house stood wide open; so did the great hall door at the other

end; and Graham could see the courtyard full of sunshine, the

iron railing separating it from the road, the river gleaming,

the bridge and railway station beyond, and then again the

background of hills. He passed through the house, and went out

into the courtyard. Here were more people, more gay dresses,

gossip, cigars, and coffee; more benches and tables set in the

scanty shade of the formal round-topped trees that stood in

square green boxes round the paved quadrangle. Outside in the

road, a boy with a monkey stood grinding a melancholy organ;

the sun seemed setting to the pretty pathetic tune, which

mingled not inharmoniously with the hum of voices and sudden

bursts of laughter; the children were jumping and dancing to

their lengthening shadows, but with a measured glee, so as not

to disturb too seriously the elaborate combination of starch

and ribbon and shining plaits which composed their fête day

toilettes. A small tottering thing of two years old, emulating

its companions of larger growth, toppled over and fell

lamenting at Graham's feet as he came out. He picked it up,

and set it straight again, and then, to console it, found a

sou, and showed it how to put it into the monkey's brown

skinny hand, till the child screamed with delight instead of

woe. The lad had a kind, loving heart, and was tender to all

helpless appealing things, and more especially to little

children.

He stood watching the pretty glowing scene for a few minutes,

and then went in to his solitary _réchauffé_ dinner. Coming out

again half an hour or so later, he found everything changed.

The monkey boy and his organ were gone, the sun had set,

twilight and mists were gathering in the valley, and the

courtyard was deserted; but across the grey dusk, light was

streaming through the muslin window curtains of the salon, the

noise of laughter, and voices, and music came from within now,

breaking the evening stillness; for everyone had gone indoors

to the salon, where the gas was lighted, chairs and tables

pushed out of the way, and Mademoiselle Cécile, the fat good-

natured daughter of the _propriétaire_, already seated at the

piano. The hall outside fills with grinning waiters and maids,

who have their share of the fun as they look in through the

open door. Round go the dancers, sliding and twirling on the

smooth polished floor, and Mademoiselle Cécile's fingers fly

indefatigably over the keys, as she sits nodding her head to

the music, and smiling as each familiar face glides past her.

Horace, who, after lingering awhile in the courtyard, had come

indoors like the rest of the world, stood apart at the further

end of the room, sufficiently entertained with looking on at

the scene, which had the charm of novelty to his English eyes,

and commenting to himself on the appearance of the dancers.

"But you do wrong not to dance, dear Monsieur, I assure you,"

said his Belgian friend, coming up to him at the end of a

polka, with the elderly Countess, who with her dingy lilac

barége gown exchanged for a dingier lilac silk, and her sandy

hair fuzzier than ever, had been dancing vigorously.

"Mademoiselle Cécile's music is delicious," he continued, "it

positively inspires one; let me persuade you to attempt just

one little dance."

"Indeed, I would rather look on," said Horace; "I can listen to

Mademoiselle Cécile's music all the same, and I do not care

much for dancing, as I told you; besides, I don't know anyone

here."

"If that be all," cried the other eagerly, "I can introduce

you to half a dozen partners in a moment; that lady that I

have just been dancing with, for instance, will be charmed----"

"Stop, I entreat you," said the young Englishman, in alarm, as

his friend was about to rush off; "I cannot indeed--I assure

you I am a very bad dancer; I am tired with my long walk too."

"Ah, that walk," said the Belgian, "I did wrong in advising

you to take it; you prolonged it till you missed the _table-

d'hôte_ dinner, and now you are too much fatigued to dance."

"But I am very much amused as it is, I assure you," insisted

Graham. "Do tell me something about all these people. Are they

all stopping at the hotel?"

His companion was delighted to give any information in his

power. No, not a third of the people were stopping at the

hotel, the greater part had come over from Liége, and would go

back there by the ten o'clock train.

"Then you do not know many of them?" Graham said.

"No," the Belgian admitted, "he did not know many of them;

only those who were staying at Chaudfontaine. That lady he had

just been dancing with, Monsieur had seen in the morning, he

believed; she was the Countess G----, a most distinguished

person, with blood-royal in her veins, and came from Brussels.

That pretty girl in blue was Mademoiselle Sophie L----, who was

going to be married next month to one of the largest

proprietors in the neighbourhood, the young man standing by

her, who was paying her so much attention. The odd-looking man

in shoes and buckles was a rising genius, or thought himself

so, a violinist, who came over occasionally from Liége, and

hoped to make his fortune some day in London or Paris; and

perhaps he will do so," says the Belgian, "for he has talent.

That little dirty-looking young man with a hooked nose, and

the red Turkish slippers, is a Spaniard going through a course

of studies at Liége; he is staying in the hotel, and so are

the fat old gentleman and lady seated on the sofa; they are

Brazilians, and he has been sent over by his Government to

purchase arms, I believe. Those three young ladies in white

are sisters, and are come here from Antwerp for the summer;

that is their mother talking to Mademoiselle Cécile. I see no

one else at this moment," he added, looking slowly round the

room at the groups of dancers who stood chattering and fanning

themselves in the interval between the dances.

"Who is that?" asked Graham, directing his attention to a

gentleman who had just appeared, and was standing, leaning in

the doorway opposite.

He was a tall handsome man, with light air, and a long fair

moustache and beard, perfectly well dressed, and with an air

sufficiently distinguished to make him at once conspicuous

amongst the Liége clerks and shopkeepers, of whom a large part

of the company consisted.

"Ah! precisely, Monsieur, you have fixed upon the most

remarkable personage here," cried his companion, with some

excitement; "but is it possible you do not know him?"

"I never saw him before," answered Graham. "Is he a celebrity?

A prince, or an ambassador, or anything of that kind?"

"No, nothing of that kind," said the other laughing, "but a

celebrity nevertheless in his way. That is M. Linders, the

great gambler."

"I never even heard of him," said the young Englishman; "but

then I don't know much about such people."

"It is true, I had forgotten that Monsieur is not of this

country; but you would hear enough about him were you to stay

any time at Wiesbaden, or Homburg, or Spa, or any of those

places. He twice broke the bank at Homburg last year, won two

hundred thousand francs at Spa this summer, and lost them

again the next week. He is a most dangerous fellow, and

positively dreaded by the proprietors of the tables."

"What! when he loses two hundred thousand francs?"

"Ah! that is a thing that rarely happens; as a rule he is

perfectly cool, which is the principal thing at these tables,

plays when the run is in his favour, and stops when it is

against him; but occasionally he gets excited, and then of

course the chances are that he loses everything like another."

"What can he be doing here?" said Graham.

"Who knows? Stopping a night or two on his way to Paris, or

Brussels, perhaps, on the chance of finding some one here rich

enough and imprudent enough to make it worth his while. You do

not play, Monsieur?"

"Never in that way," answered the lad, laughing; "I can get

through a game of whist decently enough, but I rarely touch

cards at all."

"Ah, then you are safe: otherwise I would have said, avoid M.

Linders; he has not the best reputation in the world, and he

has a brother-in-law who generally travels with him, and is

even a greater rogue than himself, but not so lucky--so they

say at least."

"Do you know him, this famous gambler? He does not look much

like one," says Graham.

"That is true; but he is a man of good birth and education, I

believe, though he has turned out such a _mauvais sujet_, and it

is part of his _métier_ to get himself up in that style. Yes, I

know him a little, from meeting him here and elsewhere; he is

always going about, sometimes _en prince_, sometimes in a more

humble way--but excuse me, dear Monsieur, Mademoiselle Cécile

has begun to play, and I am engaged to Mademoiselle Sophie for

this dance; she will never forgive me if I make her wait."

The dancers whirled on; the room grew hotter and hotter. M.

Linders had disappeared, and Graham began to think that he too

had had almost enough of it all, and that it would be pleasant

to seek peace and coolness in the deserted moonlit courtyard.

He was watching for a pause in the waltz that would admit of

his crossing the room, when his attention was attracted by the

same little girl he had seen that morning in the garden. She

was still dressed in the shabby old frock and pinafore, and as

she came creeping in, threading her way deftly amongst the

young ladies in starched muslins and gay ribbons who were

fluttering about, she made the effect of a little brown moth

who had strayed into the midst of a swarm of brilliant

butterflies. No one took any notice of her, and she made her

way up to the large round table which had been pushed into the

far corner of the room, and near which Graham was standing.

"Do you want anything?" he asked, as he saw her raise herself

on tiptoe, and stretch forward over the table.

"I want _that_," she said, pointing to a miniature roulette

board, which stood in the middle, beyond the reach of her

small arm.

He gave it to her, and then stood watching to see what she

would do with it. She set to work with great deliberation;

first pulling a handful of sugar-plums out of her pocket, and

arranging them in a little heap at her side on the table, and

then proceeding with much gravity to stake them on the

numbers. She would put down a bonbon and give the board a

twirl; "_ving-cinq_," she would say; the ball flew round and

fell into a number; it might be ten, or twenty, or twenty-

five, it did not much matter; she looked to see what it was,

but right or wrong, never failed to eat the bonbon--an

illogical result, which contrasted quaintly with the intense

seriousness with which she made her stakes. Sometimes she

would place two or three sugar-plums on one number, always

naming it aloud--"_trente-et-un_," "_douze-premier_," "_douze-

après_." It was the oddest game for a small thing not six years

old; and there was something odd, too, in her matter-of-fact,

business-like air, which amused Graham. He had seen gambling-

tables during his three weeks' visit to Germany, and he felt

sure that this child must have seen them too.

"Eh! What an insupportable heat!" cried a harsh high-pitched

voice behind him. "Monsieur Jules, I will repose myself for a

few minutes, if you will have the goodness to fetch me a glass

of _eau sucrée. Je n'en peux plus!_"

Graham, recognizing the voice, turned round, and saw the

Countess G---- leaning on the arm of a young man with whom she

had been dancing.

"But it is really stifling!" she exclaimed, dropping into an

arm-chair by the table as her partner retired. "Monsieur does

not dance, apparently," she continued, addressing Horace.

"Well, you are perhaps right; it is a delightful amusement,

but on a night like this---- Ah! here is little Madelon. I have

not seen you before to-day. How is it you are not dancing?"

"I don't want to," answered the child, giving the roulette-

board a twirl.

"But that is not at all a pretty game that you have there,"

said the Countess, shaking her head; "it was not for little

girls that Mademoiselle Cécile placed the roulette-board

there. Where is your doll? why are you not playing with her?"

"My doll is in bed; and I like this best," answered the child

indifferently. "_Encore ce malheureux trente-six! Je n'ai pas

de chance ce soir!_"

"But little girls should not like what is naughty: and I think

it would be much better if you were in bed too. Come, give me

that ugly toy; there is Monsieur quite shocked to see you

playing with it."

Madelon looked up into Horace's face with her wide-open gaze,

as if to verify this wonderful assertion; and apparently

satisfied that it had been made for the sake of effect,

continued her game without making any reply.

"Oh, then, I really must take it away," said the Countess;

"_allons_, be reasonable, _ma petite;_ let me have that, and go

and dance with the other little boys and girls."

"But I don't want to dance, and I like to play at this," cries

Madelon with her shrill little voice, clutching the board with

both her small hands, as the Countess tried to get possession

of it; "you have no right to take it away. Papa lets me play

with it; and I don't care for you! Give it me back again, I

say; _je le veux, je le veux!_"

"No, no," answered the Countess, pushing it beyond Madelon's

reach to the other side of the table. "I daresay you have seen

your papa play at that game; but children must not always do

the same as their papas. Now, be good, and eat your bonbons

like a sensible child."

"I will not eat them if I may not play for them!" cried the

child; and with one sweep of her hand she sent them all off

the table on to the floor, and stamped on them again and again

with her tiny foot. "You have no right to speak to me so!" she

went on energetically; "no one but my papa speaks to me; and I

don't know you, and I don't like you, and you are very ugly!"

and then she turned her back on the Countess and stood in

dignified silence.

"_Mais c'est un petit diable!_" cried the astonished lady,

fanning herself vigorously with her pocket-handkerchief. She

was discomfited though she had won the victory, and hailed the

return of her partner with the _eau sucrée_ as a relief. "A

thousand thanks, M. Jules! What if we take another turn,

though this room really is of insufferable heat."

Madelon was let confronting Horace, a most ill-used little

girl, not crying, but with flushed cheeks and pouting lips--a

little girl who had lost her game and her bonbons, and felt at

war with all the world in consequence. Horace was sorry for

her; he, too, thought she had been ill-used, and no sooner was

the Countess fairly off than he said, very immorally, no

doubt,

"Would you like to have your game back again?"

"No," said Madelon, in whom this speech roused a fresh sense

of injury; "I have no more bonbons."

Graham had none to offer her, and a silence ensued, during

which she stood leaning against the table, slowly scraping one

foot backwards and forwards over the remains of the scattered

bonbons. At last he bethought him of a small bunch of charms

that he had got somewhere, and hung to his watch-chain, and

with which he had often enticed and won the hearts of

children.

"Would you like to come and look at these?" he said, holding

them up.

"No," she replied, ungraciously, and retreating a step

backwards.

"Not at this?" he said. "Here is a little steam engine that

runs on wheels; and, see, here is a fan that will open and

shut."

"No," she said again, with a determined little shake of her

head, and still retreating.

"But only look at this," he said, selecting a little flexible

enamel fish, and trying to lure back this small wild bird.

"See this little gold and green fish, it moves its head and

tail."

"No," she said once more, but the fish was evidently a

temptation, and she paused irresolute for a moment; but Graham

made a step forward, and this decided her.

"I don't care for _breloques_," she said, with disdain, "and I

don't want to see them, I tell you." And then, turning round,

she marched straight out of the room.

At that moment the music stopped, the waltzing ceased, an a

line of retreat was left open for Graham. He saw the Countess

once more approaching, and availed himself of it; out of the

noise and heat and crowd he fled, into the fresh open air of

the quiet courtyard.

CHAPTER III.

In the Courtyard.

Three gentlemen with cigars, sitting on the bench under the

salon windows, two more pacing up and down in the moonlight

before the hall-door, and a sixth apparently asleep in a

shadowy corner, were the only occupants of the courtyard.

Graham passed them by, and sought solitude at the lower end,

where he found a seat on the stone coping of the iron railing.

The peace and coolness and silence were refreshing, after the

heat and clamour of the salon; the broad harvest-moon had

risen above the opposite ridge of hills, and flooded

everything with clear light, the river gleamed and sparkled,

the poplars threw long still shadows across the white road;

now and then the leaves rustled faintly, some far-off voice

echoed back from the hills, and presently from the hotel the

sound of the music, and the measured beat of feet, came

softened to the ear, mingled with the low rush of the stream,

and the ceaseless ringing of the hammers in the village

forges.

Horace had not sat there above ten minutes, and was debating

whether--his Belgian friend notwithstanding--a stroll along the

river-bank would not be a pleasanter termination to his

evening than a return to the dancing, when he saw a small

figure appear in the hall doorway, stand a moment as is

irresolute, and then come slowly across the courtyard towards

him. As she came near he recognised little Madelon. She pauses

when she was within a yard or two of him, and stood

contemplating him with her hands clasped behind her back.

"So you have come out too," he said.

"_Mais oui--tout ce tapage m'agace les nerfs_," answered the

child, pushing her hair off her forehead with one of her old-

fashioned little gestures, and then standing motionless as

before, her hands behind her, and her eyes fixed on Graham.

Somehow he felt strangely attracted by this odd little child,

with her quaint vehement ways and speeches, who stood gazing

at him with a look half _farouche_, half confiding, in her great

brown eyes.

"Monsieur," she began, at last.

"Well," said Graham.

"Monsieur, I _would_ like to see the little green fish. May I

look at it?"

"To be sure," he answered. "Come here, and I will show it to

you."

"And, Monsieur, I do like _breloques_ very much," continues

Madelon, feeling that this is a moment for confession.

"Very well, then, you can look at all these. See, here is the

little fish to begin with."

"And may I have it in my own hand to look at?" she asked,

willing to come to some terms before capitulating.

"Yes, you shall have it to hold in your own hand, if you will

come here."

She came close to him then, unclasping her hands, and holding

a tiny palm to receive the little trinket.

Horace was engaged in unfastening it from the rest of the

bunch, and whilst doing so he said,

"Will you not tell me your name? Madelon, is it not?"

"My name is Madeleine, but papa and every one call me

Madelon."

"Madeleine what?"

"Madeleine Linders."

"Linders!" cried Horace, suddenly enlightened; "what, is M.

Linders--" the famous gambler he had nearly said, but checked

himself--"is that tall gentleman with a beard, whom I saw in

the salon just now, your papa?"

"Yes, that is my papa. Please may I have that now?"

He put the little flexible toy into her hand, and she stood

gazing at it for a moment, almost afraid to touch it, and then

pushing it gently backwards and forwards with one finger.

"It does move!" she cried delighted. "I never saw one like it

before."

"Would you like to keep it?" asked Graham.

"Always, do you mean?--for my very own?"

"Yes, always."

"Ah, yes!" she cried, "I should like it very much. I will wear

it round my neck with a string, and love it so much, --better

than Sophie."

She looked at it with great admiration as it glittered in the

moonlight; but her next question fairly took Horace aback.

"Is it worth a great deal of money, Monsieur?" she inquired.

"Why, no, not a great deal--very little, in fact," he replied.

"Ah! then, I will beg papa to let me keep it always, always,

and not to take it away."

"I daresay he will let you keep it, if you tell him you like

it," said Graham, not clearly understanding her meaning.

"Oh! yes, but then he often gives me pretty things, and then

sometimes he says he must take them away again, because they

are worth so much money. I don't mind, you know, if he wants

them; but I will ask him to let me keep this."

"And what becomes of all your pretty things?"

"I don't know; I have none now," she answered, "we left them

behind at Spa. Do you know one reason why I would not dance

to-night?" she added, lowering her voice confidentially.

"No; what was it?"

"Because I had not my blue silk frock with lace, that I wear

at the balls at Wiesbaden and Spa. I can dance, you know, papa

taught me; but not in this old frock, and I left my other at

Spa."

"And what were your other reasons?" asked Graham, wondering

more and more at the small specimen of humanity before him.

"Oh! because the room here is so small and crowded. At

Wiesbaden there are rooms large--so large--quite like this

courtyard," extending her small arms by way of giving

expression to her vague sense of grandeur; "and looking-

glasses all round, and crimson sofas, and gold chandeliers,

and ladies in such beautiful dresses, and officers who danced

with me. I don't know any one here."

"And who were the Count and the Prince you were talking about

to Mademoiselle Sophie in the garden this morning?"

Madelon looked disconcerted.

"I shan't tell you," she said, hanging down her head.

"Will you not? Not if I want to know very much?"

She hesitated a moment, then burst forth--

"Well, then, they were just nobody at all. I was only talking

make-believe to Sophie, that she might do the steps properly."

"Oh! then, you did not expect to see them here this evening?"

"Here!" cries Madelon, with much contempt; "why, no. One meets

nothing but _bourgeois_ here."

Graham was infinitely amused.

"Am I a _bourgeois?_" he said, laughing.

"I don't know," she replied, looking at him; "but you are not

a milord, I know, for I heard papa asking Mademoiselle Cécile

about you, and she said you were not a milord at all."

"So you care for nothing but Counts and Princes?"

"I don't know," she said again. Then with an evident sense

that such abstract propositions would involve her beyond her

depth, she added, "Have you any other pretty things to show

me? I should like to see what else you have on your chain."

In five minutes more they were fast friends, and Madelon,

seated on Graham's knee, was chattering away, and recounting

to him all the history of her short life. He was not long in

perceiving that her father was the beginning and end of all

her ideas--her one standard of perfection, the one medium

through which, small as she was, she was learning to look out

on and estimate the world, and receiving her first impressions

of life. She had no mother, she said, in answer to Graham's

inquiries. _Maman_ had died when she was quite a little baby;

and though she seemed to have some dim faint recollection of

having once lived in a cottage in the country, with a woman to

take care of her, everything else referred to her father, from

her first, vague floating memories to the time when she could

date them as distinct and well-defined, facts. She had once

had a nurse, she said, --a long time ago that was, when she was

little--but papa did not like her, and so she went away; and

now she was too big for one. Papa did everything for her, it

appeared, from putting her to sleep at night, when

Mademoiselle was disposed to be wakeful, to nursing her when

she was ill, taking her to fêtes on grand holidays, buying her

pretty things, walking with her, teaching her dancing, and

singing, and reading; and she loved him so much--ah! so much!

Indeed, in all the world, the child had but one object for a

child's boundless powers of trust and love and veneration, and

that one was her father.

"And where do you generally live now?" asked Graham.

"Why, nowhere in particular," Madelon answered. "Of course

not--they were always travelling about. Papa had to go to a

great many places. They had come last from Spa, and before

that they had been at Wiesbaden and Homburg, and last winter

they had spent at Nice: and now they were on their way to

Paris."

"And do you and your papa always live alone? Have you not an

uncle?" enquired Graham, remembering the Belgian's speech

about the brother-in-law.

"Oh! yes, there is Uncle Charles--he comes with us generally;

but sometimes he goes away, and then I am so glad."

"How is that? are you not fond of him?"

"No," said Madelon, "I don't like him at all; he is very

disagreeable, and teases me. And he is always wanting me to go

away; he says, 'Adolphe'--that is papa, you know--'when is that

child going to school?' But papa pays no attention to him, for

he is never going to send me away; he told me so, and he says

he could not get on without me at all."

Graham no longer wondered at Madelon's choice of a game, for

it appeared she was in the habit of accompanying her father

every evening to the gambling tables, when they were at any of

the watering-places he frequented.

"Sometimes we go away into the ball-room and dance," she said,

"that is when papa is losing; he says, 'Madelon, _mon enfant_, I

see we shall do nothing here to-night, let us go and dance.'

But sometimes he does nothing but win, and then we stop till

the table closes, and he makes a great deal of money. Do you

ever make money in that way, Monsieur?" she added naïvely.

"Indeed I do not," replied Graham.

"It is true that everyone has not the same way," said the

child, with an air of being well informed, and evidently

regarding her father's way as a profession like another, only

superior to most. "What do you do, Monsieur?"

"I am going to be a doctor, Madelon."

"A doctor," she said reflecting; "I do not think that can be a

good way. I only know one doctor, who cured me when I was ill

last winter; but I know a great many gentlemen who make money

like papa. Can you make a fortune with ten francs, Monsieur?"

"I don't think I ever tried," answered Horace.

"Ah, well, papa can; I have often heard him say, 'Give me only

ten francs, _et je ferai fortune!_' "

There was something at once so droll and so sad about this

child, with her precocious knowledge and ignorant simplicity,

that the lad's honest tender heart was touched with a sudden

pity as he listened to her artless chatter. He was almost glad

when her confidences drifted away to more childlike subjects

of interest, and she told him about her toys, and books, and

pictures, and songs; she could sing a great many songs, she

said, but Horace could not persuade her to let him hear one.

"Why do you talk French?" she said presently; "you speak it so

funnily. I can talk English."

"Can you?" said Horace laughing, for indeed he spoke French

with a fine English accent and idiom. "Let me hear you. Where

did you learn it?"

"Uncle Charles taught me; he is English," she answered,

speaking correctly enough, with a pretty little accent.

"Indeed!" cried Graham. "Your mother was English, then?"

"Yes. Mamma came from England, papa says, and Uncle Charles

almost always talks English to me. I would not let him do it,

only papa wished me to learn."

"And have you any other relations in England?"

"I don't know," she answered. "We have never been in England,

and papa says he will never go, for he detests the English;

but I only know Uncle Charles and you, and I like you."

"What is your Uncle Charles' other name? Can you tell me?"

"Leroy," she answered promptly.

"But that is not an English name," said Graham.

This was a little beyond Madelon, but after some

consideration, she said with much simplicity,

"I don't know whether it is not English. But it is only lately

his name has been Leroy, since he came back from a journey he

made; before that it was something else, I forget what, but I

heard him tell papa he would like to be called Leroy, as it

was a common name; and papa told me, in case anyone asked me."

"I understand," said Graham; and indeed he did understand, and

felt a growing compassion for the poor little girl, whose only

companions and protectors were a gambler and a sharper.

They were still talking, when the silence of the courtyard was

broken by a sudden confusion and bustle. The sound of the

music and dancing had already ceased; and now a medley of

voices, a shrill clamour of talking and calling, made

themselves heard through the open hall door.

"Henri! Henri! Où est-il donc, ce petit drôle?"

"Allons, Pauline, dépêche-toi, mon enfant, ton père nous

attend!"

"Ciel! j'ai perdu mon fichu et mes gants."

"Enfin."

"The people are going away," says Madelon; and, in fact, in

another minute the whole party, talking, laughing, hurrying,

came streaming out by twos and threes into the moonlight, and,

crossing the road and bridge, disappeared one by one in the

station beyond, the sound of their voices still echoing back

through the quiet night. The last had hardly vanished when a

tall solitary figure appeared in the courtyard, and advanced,

looking round as if searching for some one.

"Madelon!" cried the same voice that Graham had heard that

morning in the garden.

"There is papa looking for me; I must go," exclaimed the child

at the same moment; and before Graham had time to speak, she

had slipped off his knee and darted up to her father; then

taking his hand, the two went off together, the small figure

jumping and dancing by the side of the tall man as they

disappeared within the doorway of the hotel.

A few minutes more, and then a sound as of distant thunder

told that the train was approaching through the tunnel. Graham

watched it emerge, traverse the clear moonlit valley with

slackening speed, and pause at the station for its freight of

passengers. There was a vague sound of confusion as the people

took their places, and then with a parting shriek it set off

again; and as the sound died away in the distance, a great

stillness succeeded the noise and bustle of a few moments

before.

Horace was afraid he had seen the last of Madelon, for

returning to the hotel he found no one in the salon, with the

exception of Mademoiselle Cécile, who was already putting out

the lights. The hall, too, was deserted; the servants had

vanished, and the _habitués_ of the hotel had apparently gone to

bed, for he met no one as he passed along, and turned down the

passage leading to the salle-à-manger. This was a large long

room, occupying the whole ground floor of one wing of the

hotel, with windows looking out on one side into the

courtyard, on the other into the garden, two long tables,

smaller ones in the space between, and above them a row of

chandeliers smothered in pink and yellow paper roses. The room

looked bare and deserted enough now; a sleepy waiter lounged

at the further end, the trees in the garden rustled and waved

to and fro in the rising night breeze, the moonlight streamed

through the uncurtained windows on to the boarded floor and

white table-cloths, chasing the darkness into remote corners,

and contending with the light of the single lamp which stood

on one of the smaller tables, where two men were sitting,

drinking, smoking, and playing at cards.

One of them was a man between thirty and forty, in a tight-

fitting black coat buttoned up to his chin, and with a thin

face, smooth shaven, with the exception of a little yellow

moustache, and sharp grey eyes. He would have been handsome,

had it not been for his unpleasant expression, at once knowing

and suspicious. The other Horace immediately recognised as

Monsieur Linders; and a moment afterwards he perceived little

Madeleine, sitting nestled close up to her father's side. The

lamplight shone on her curly head and innocent _mignonne_ face

as she watched the game with eager eyes; it was piquant, and

she was marking for her father, and when he had a higher score

than his opponent, she laughed and clapped her hands with

delight.

Graham stood watching this little scene for a minute; and

somehow, as he looked at the little motherless girl, there

came the thought of small rosy children he knew far away in

England, who, having said their prayers, and repeated their

Sunday hymns, perhaps, had been tucked into little white beds,

and been fast asleep hours ago; and a kind, foolish notion

entered the young fellow's head, that, for that one evening at

least, he must get the brown-eyed child, who had taken his

fancy so much, away from the drinking, and smoking, and card-

playing, into a purer atmosphere. He went up to the table, and

leant over her chair.

"Will you come out again and have a walk with me in the

garden?" he said in English.

The man opposite, who was dealing, looked up sharply and

suspiciously. Madelon turned round, and gazed up into the kind

face smiling down on her, then shook her head with great

decision.

"Not a little walk? I will tell you such pretty stories, all

about fairies, and moonlight, and little boys and girls, and

dragons," said Horace, drawing largely on his imagination, in

his desire to offer a sufficient inducement.

"No," said Madelon, "I can't come; I am marking for papa."

"What is it?" said M. Linders, who understood very little

English; "what does this gentleman want, _mon enfant?_"

"I was asking your little girl if she would take a walk with

me in the garden," says Horace, getting rather red, and in his

bad French.

"Monsieur is too good," answers M. Linders, making a grand

bow, whilst his companion, having finished dealing, sat

puffing away at his cigar, and drumming impatiently with his

fingers on the table; "but the hour is rather late; what do

you say, Madelon? Will you go with Monsieur?"

"No, papa," says the child, "I am marking for you; I don't

want to go away."

"You see how it is, Monsieur," said M. Linders, turning to

Graham with a smile and shrug. "This little one thinks herself

of so much importance, that she will not leave me."

"Are you then mad," cried his companion, "that you think of

letting Madelon go out at this time of night? It is nearly

eleven o'clock, and she can hardly keep her eyes open."

"My eyes are wide, wide open, Uncle Charles," exclaimed

Madelon, indignantly; "I'm not a bit tired, but I don't want

to go out now."

"Monsieur will perhaps join our party," said Monsieur Linders,

very politely. "I should be delighted to try my luck with a

fresh adversary."

"Thank you," said Graham, "but I hardly ever touch cards."

Then turning to Madelon, he added, "I must go away now, since

you will not come for a walk. Won't you wish me good-bye? I

shall not be here to-morrow."

She turned round and put her little hand into his for a

moment; then with a sudden shy caprice snatched it away, and

hid her face on her father's shoulder, just peeping at him

with her bright eyes. But she started up again suddenly as he

was leaving the room, calling out "_Adieu, Monsieur, bon

voyage_," and kissing her hand to him. He smiled and nodded in

return, bowed to M. Linders, and so went away. There was a

moment's silence after he went, and then, "You have made a

fine acquaintance this evening, Madelon," said her uncle.

Madelon made a little _moue_, but did not answer.

"Are you then mad, Adolphe," he said again, "that you permit

Madeleine to pick up an acquaintance with anyone who chooses

to speak to her? An Englishman too!"

"Papa is not mad," cried Madelon, between whom and her uncle

there was apparently a standing skirmish. "He was a very kind

gentleman, and I like him very much; he gave me this little

goldfish, and I shall keep it always, always," and she kissed

it with effusion.

"Bah!" said M. Linders, "English or French, it is all one to

me; and what harm could he do to the little one? It was an

accident, but it does not matter for once. Come, Madelon, you

have forgotten to mark."

"It is your turn to deal next, papa," said the child, "may I

do it for you?"

Horace Graham left Chaudfontaine by the earliest train the

following morning; and of all the people he had seen on that

Sunday evening at the hotel, only two ever crossed his path

again in after years--M. Linders, and his little daughter,

Madeleine.

CHAPTER IV.

Retrospect.

M. Linders was of both Belgian and French extraction, his

father having been a native of Liége, his mother a Parisian of

good family, who, in a moment of misplaced sentiment, as she

was wont in after years to sigh, had consented to marry a

handsome young Belgian officer, and had expiated her folly by

spending the greater part of her married life at Malines,

where her husband was stationed, and at Liége, where his

mother and sister resided. Adolphe's education, however, was

wholly French; for Madame Linders, who, during her husband's

life, had not ceased to mourn over her exile from her own

city, lost no time, after his death, in returning to Paris

with her two children, Thérèse, a girl of about twelve, and

Adolphe, then a child five or six years old.

Madame Linders had money, but not much, and she made it go

further than did ever Frenchwoman before, which is saying a

great deal. Adolphe must be educated, Adolphe must be clothed,

Adolphe was to be a great man some day; he was to go into the

army, make himself a name, become a General, a Marshal,--heaven

knows what glories the mother did not dream for him, as she

turned and twisted her old black silks, in the _entresol_ in the

Chaussée d'Antin, where she had her little apartment. She had

friends in Paris, and must keep up appearances for Adolphe's

sake, not to mention her own, and so could not possibly live

in a cheap out-of-the-way quarter.

As for Thérèse, she was of infinitely small account in the

family. She was plain, not too amiable, nor particularly

clever, and inclined to be _dévote;_ and, as in spite of

positive and negative failings, she also had to eat and be

clothed as well as her handsome fair brother, she could be

regarded as nothing else than a burden in the economical

household.

"You ask me what I shall do with Thérèse?" said Madame Linders

one day to a confidential friend. "Oh! she will go into a

convent, of course. I know of an excellent one near Liége, of

which her aunt is the superior, and where she will be

perfectly happy. She has a turn that way. What else can I do

with her, my dear? To speak frankly, she is _laide à faire

peur_, and she can have no _dot_ worth mentioning; for I have not

a sou to spare; so there is no chance of her marrying."

Thérèse knew her fate, and was resigned to it. As her mother

said, she had a turn that way; and to the Liége convent she

according went, but not before Madame Linders' death, which

took place when her daughter was about seven-and-twenty, and

which was, as Thérèse vehemently averred, occasioned by grief

at her son's conduct.

Adolphe had also known the fate reserved for him, and was by

no means resigned to it; for he had never had the least

intention of becoming a soldier, and having escaped

conscription, absolutely refused to enter the army. He was a

clever, unprincipled lad, who had done well at his studies,

but lost no time in getting into the most dissipated society

he could find from the moment he left college. He inherited

his father's good looks, but his mother's predilections

apparently; for he set out in life with the determination to

be Parisian amongst Parisians--of a certain class, be it

understood; and having some talent for drawing, as indeed he

had for most things, he used it as a pretext, announced that

he intended to be an artist, and furnishing a room in the

Quartier Latin, with an easel and a pipe, he began the wild

Bohemian life which he found most in accordance with his

tastes.

He was selfish and reckless enough, but not altogether

heartless, for he had a real affection for his mother, which

might have been worked upon with advantage. But Madame

Linders, who had indulged him till he had learnt to look upon

her devotion as a thing of course, now turned upon him with

the fretful, inconsequent reproaches of a weak mind; and

finding that he was constantly met with tearful words and

aggrieved looks, her son avoided her as much as possible. His

sister he could not endure. Thérèse had always been jealous of

the marked preference shown to him; and now, with an evident

sense of triumph, she preached little sermons, talked at him

with unceasing perseverance, and in truth was not a very

engaging person.

Madame Linders had not been dead ten days, when the brother

and sister had a violent quarrel, and parted with the

determination on either side never to meet again--a resolution

which was perfectly well kept. Thérèse retired to the Belgian

convent, and Adolphe, the possessor of a few thousand francs,

the remains of his mother's small fortune, returned to his

studio and to the life he had chosen.

The success and duration of a career of this sort is in exact

proportion to the amount of capital, real or assumed, invested

in it. Monsieur Linders' capital was very small; his francs

and credit both were soon exhausted, and began to find that

making-believe to paint pictures was hardly a paying business.

He tried to take portraits, attempted etching, gambled, and,

finally, being more in debt than he could well afford,

disappeared from the Paris world for a number of years, and

for a long space was known and heard of no more. It was indeed

affirmed in his circle of acquaintance that he had been seen

playing a fiddle at one of the cheap theatres; that he had

been recognized in the dress of a fiacre-driver, and in that

of a waiter at a Café Chantant: but these reports were idly

spread, and wanted confirmation. They might or might not have

been true. M. Linders never cared to talk much of those seven

or eight years in which he had effaced himself, as it were,

from society; but it may be imagined that he went through some

strange experiences in a life which was a struggle for bare

existence. Respectable ways of gaining a livelihood he ever

held in aversion; and it was not, therefore, to be expected

that a foolish and unprofitable pride would interfere to

prevent his using any means not absolutely criminal in order

to reach any desired end.

At length, however, he emerged from obscurity, and rose once

more to the surface of society; and one of his old

acquaintance, who encountered him at Homburg, returned

marvelling to Paris to relate that he had seen Adolphe Linders

winning fabulous sums at _trente-et-quarante_, that he was

decently clothed, had a magnificent suite of apartments at one

of the first hotels, and an English wife of wondrous beauty.

Monsieur Linders had, in fact, sown his wild oats, so to

speak, and settled down to the business of his life. In former

days, gambling had been a passion with him--too much so,

indeed, to admit of his playing with any great success; he had

been apt to lose both temper and skill. Time, however, while

increasing this passion for play, till it gradually became a

necessity of his life, had taught him to bring to bear upon it

all the ability which would have eminently fitted him for some

more praiseworthy employment. Formerly he had indulged in it

as a diversion; now it became a serious business, which he

prosecuted with a cool head, determined will, and unfailing

perseverance--qualities for which few would have given him

credit in the wild unsettled period of his early career. The

result was highly satisfactory to himself; he was soon known

as one of the most successful haunters of the German and

Belgian gaming-tables; he cast off the outward aspect and

manners of the Bohemian set he had once affected, and assumed

the guise and dress of the gentleman he really was--at least by

birth and education--and which he found at once more profitable

and more congenial to his maturer tastes. He lived splendidly,

and spent money freely when he had it; incurred debts with

great facility when he had not--debts which he did or did not

pay, as the case might be.

It was during a winter spent at Brussels that he made the

acquaintance of Charles Moore, a young Englishman with tastes

identical with his own, but inferior to him in ability,

talents, and even in principles. A sort of partnership was

formed between them, Mr. Linders undertaking most of the work,

and the Englishman contributing his small fortune as capital;

and not only his own, but that of his sister Magdalen, a young

girl who had come abroad with her brother, the only near

relation she had in the world. M. Linders had been introduced

to her, and she, in complete ignorance of the real character

of either him or her brother Charles, had, with all the

simplicity of eighteen, straightway fallen in love with the

handsome gentlemanlike man, who, on his side, made no secret

of the impression produced on him by the great loveliness of

the English girl. Moore, who was a thoroughly heartless scamp,

had not the least compunction in agreeing to a marriage

between his sister and this man, with whose character and mode

of life he was perfectly well acquainted; indeed, it suited

his views so well, that he did what lay in his power to

forward it. There were no difficulties in the way; the two

were almost alone in the world. He had been left her sole

guardian by their old father, who had died a twelve-month

before; and she, trusting her brother entirely, was glad to

leave everything in his hands. The marriage was accomplished

with all possible speed, and it was not till nearly two months

later that an accident revealed to Magdalen Linders, what

indeed in any case she must have discovered before long--what

manner of man this was she had got for her husband.

Then she did not pine away, nor sicken with despair, being of

a great courage, strong to bear evil and misfortune, and not

made of the stuff that gives way under cruel deception and

disappointment. She uttered only one reproach--

"You should have told me of all this, Adolphe," she said.

"You would not have married me," he answered gloomily.

"I--I do not know. Ah, I loved you so much, and so truly!"

And she did love him still; and clung to him to the last, but

not the less was she broken-hearted, so far as any enjoyment

of life was concerned; and her husband saw it. All sense of

rejoicing seemed to die out of her heart for ever. She hated

the splendour with which he sometimes surrounded her, even

more than the paltry shifts and expedients to which at other

times they had to resort, when he had spent all his money, and

there was no more forthcoming for the moment; she wept when

her children were born, thinking of the iniquity of the world

they had entered; and when her two little boys died one after

the other, there was almost a sense of relief mixed with the

bitterness of her sorrow, as she reflected on the father she

could not have taught them to respect, and on the abject evil

and misery from which she could not have shielded them.

As for M. Linders, he at once adored and neglected his wife,

as was the nature of the man; that is, he adored her

theoretically for her rare beauty, but neglected her

practically, when, after a few months of married life, he saw

her bloom fading, and her animation vanish, in the utter

despondency which had seized her, and which found its outward

expression in a certain studied composure and coldness of

manner. There soon came a time when he would have willingly

freed himself altogether from the constraint of her presence.

He travelled almost incessantly, spending the summer and

autumn at the German watering-places; the winter in France, or

Belgium, or Italy; and he would sometimes propose that she

should remain at a Paris hotel till he could return to her. In

the first years after their marriage she objected vehemently.

She was so young, so unused to solitude, that she felt a

certain terror at the prospect of being left alone; and,

moreover, she still clung with a sort of desperation to her

girlish illusions, and, loving her husband, could not cease to

believe in his love for her. She had plans, too, for reforming

him, and for a long time would not allow herself to be

convinced of their utter vanity and hopelessness. After the

death of her little boys, however, she became more

indifferent, or more resigned. And so it came to pass that

when she had been married about six years, and four months

after her third child was born, Madame Linders died, alone at

a Paris hotel, with no one near her but the doctor, her baby's

nurse, and the woman of the house. She had dictated a few

words to tell her husband, who was then in Germany, that she

was dying; and, stricken with a horrible remorse, he had

travelled with all possible haste to Paris, and arrived at

daybreak one morning to find that his wife had died the

evening before.

Madame Linders' death had been caused by a fever, under which

she had sunk rapidly at last. There had been no question of

heart-breaking or pining grief here--so her husband thought

with a sort of satisfaction even then, as he remembered his

sister's words of bitter reproach over their mother's death-

bed; and yet not the less, as he looked at his dead wife's

face, did the reflection force itself upon him, that he had

made the misery instead of the happiness of her life. He was a

man who had accustomed himself to view things from the hardest

and most practical point of view; and from such a view his

marriage had been rather a failure than otherwise, since the

memory of the little fortune she had brought with her had

vanished with the fortune itself. But it had not been

altogether for money that he had married her; he had been in

love with her at one time, and that time repeated itself, with

a pertinacity not to be shaken off, as he stood now in her

silent presence.

Whatever his feelings may have been, however, they found no

expression then. He turned sharply on the women standing

round, who had already, after the fashion of womankind,

contrived, without speaking, to let him know their opinion of

a man who had left his wife alone for six months at an hotel,

whilst he went and amused himself. He scarcely glanced at the

small daughter, now presented to him for the first time; and

he bade Madame Lavaux, the mistress of the hotel, "make haste

and finish with all that," when, with tearful voice, and

discursive minuteness, she related to him the history of his

wife's last days. He made all necessary arrangements; took

possession of Madame Linders' watch and few trinkets; himself

superintended the packing of her clothes and other trifling

properties into a large trunk, which he left in Madame Lavaux'

charge; attended the funeral on the following day; and

immediately on his return from it, ordered a fiacre to be in

readiness to convey him to the railway station, as he was

going to quit Paris immediately. He was on the point of

departure, when he was confronted by Madame Lavaux and the

nurse bearing the infant, who begged to know if he had any

directions to leave concerning his child.

"Madame," he answered, addressing the landlady, "I entrust all

these matters to you; see that the child is properly provided

for, and I will send the requisite money."

"We had arranged that her nurse should take her away to her

own home in the country," said Madame Lavaux.

"That will do," he answered; and was about to leave the room,

when the nurse, an honest countrywoman, interposed once more,

to inquire where she should write to Monsieur to give him

tidings of his little daughter.

"I want none," he replied. "You can apply here to Madame for

money if the child lives; if it dies she will let me know, and

I need send no more." And so saying, he strode out of the

room, leaving the women with hands and eyes uplifted at the

hard-hearted conduct of the father.

For nearly two years M. Linders was absent from Paris,

wandering about, as his habit was, from one town to another, a

free man, as he would himself have expressed it, except for

the one tie which he acknowledged only in the sums of money he

sent from time to time, with sufficient liberality, to Madame

Lavaux. No news reached him of his child, and he demanded

none. But about twenty months after his wife's death, business

obliged him to go for a few weeks to Paris; and finding

himself with a leisure day on his hands, it occurred to him,

with a sudden impulse, to spend it in the country and go and

see his little girl. He ascertained from Madame Lavaux where

she was, and went.

The woman with whom little Madeleine had been placed lived

about fifteen miles from Paris, in a small village perched

half-way up a steep hill, from the foot of which stretched a

wide plain, where the Seine wound slowly amongst trees and

meadows, and scattered villages. The house to which M. Linders

was directed stood a little apart from the others, near the

road-side, but separated from it by a strip of garden, planted

with herbs and a patch of vines; and as he opened the gate, he

came at once upon a pretty little picture of a child of two

years, in a quaint, short-waisted, long-skirted pinafore,

toddling about, playing at hide-and-seek among the tall poles

and trailing tendrils, and kept within safe limits by a pair

of leading-strings passed round the arm of a woman who sat in

the shade of the doorway knitting. As M. Linders came up the

narrow pathway she ran towards him to the utmost extent of her

tether, uttering little joyous inarticulate cries, and

bubbling over with the happy instinctive laughter of a child

whose consciousness is bounded by its glad surroundings.

When, in moments of pseudo remorse, which would come upon him

from time to time, it occurred to M. Linders to reflect upon

his misdeeds, and adopt an apologetic tone concerning them, he

was wont to propound a singular theory respecting his life,

averring, in general terms, that it had been spoilt by women,--

a speech more epigrammatic, perhaps, than accurate, since of

the two women who had loved him best, his mother and his wife,

he had broken the heart of the one, and ruined the happiness

of the other. And yet it was not without its grain of meaning,

however false and distorted; for M. Linders, who was not more

consistent than the rest of mankind, had, by some queer

anomaly, along with all his hardness, and recklessness, and

selfishness, a capacity for affection after his own fashion,

and an odd sensitiveness to the praise and blame of those

women whom he cared for and respected which did not originate

merely in vanity and love of applause. He had been fond of his

mother, though he had ignored her wishes and abused her

generosity; and he had hated his sister Thérèse, because he

imagined that she had come between them. Their reproaches had

been unbearable to him, and though his wife had never blamed

him in words, there had been a mute upbraiding in her mournful

looks and dejected spirits, which he had resented as a wrong

done to the love he had once felt for her. In the absence of

many subjects for self-congratulation, he rather piqued

himself on a warm heart and sensitive feelings, and chose to

consider them ill-requited by the cold words and sad glances

of those whose happiness he was destroying. The idea that he

should set matters straight by adjusting his life to meet

their preconceived notions of right and wrong, would have

appeared to him highly absurd; but he considered them

unreasonable and himself ill-used when they refused to give

their approbation to his proceedings, and this idea of ill-

usage and unreasonableness he was willing to encourage, as it

enabled him to shift the responsibility of their unhappiness

from his own shoulders on to theirs, and to deaden the sense

of remorse which would make itself felt from time to time. For

in the worst of men, they say, there still lingers some touch

of kindly human feeling, and M. Linders, though amongst the

most worthless, was not perhaps absolutely the worst of men.

He was selfish enough to inflict any amount of pain, yet not

hardened enough to look unmoved on his victims. He had, in

truth, taken both their misery and their reproaches to heart;

and sometimes, especially since his wife's death, he had

surprised in himself a strange, unaccountable desire for a

love that should be true and pure, but which, ignorant of, or

ignoring his errors, should be content to care for him and

believe in him just as he was: such a love as his wife might,

perhaps, have given him in her single month of unconscious

happiness. It was a longing fitful, and not defined in words,

but a real sentiment all the same, not a sentimentality; and,

imperfect as it was in scope and tendency, it expressed the

best part of the man's nature. He despised it, and crushed it

down; but it lay latent, ready to be kindled by a touch.

And here was a small piece of womankind belonging to him, who

could upbraid by neither word nor look, who ran towards him

confidently, stretching out tiny hands to clutch at his

shining gold chain, and gazing up in his face with great brown

eyes, that recalled to him those of her dead mother, when she

had first known and learnt to love him. Had Madelon been a shy

plain child--had she hidden her face, and run from him

screaming to her nurse, as children are so wont to do, he

would then and there have paid the money he had brought with

him as the ostensible cause of his visit, and gone on his way,

thinking no more about her for another two years perhaps. But

Madelon had no thought of shyness with the tall fair handsome

man who had taken her fancy: she stood for a moment in the

pathway before him, balancing herself on tiptoe with uplifted

arms, confident in the hope of being taken up; and, as the

woman recognizing M. Linders, came forward and bade the child

run to Papa, with a sudden unaccustomed emotion of tenderness,

almost pathetic in such a man, he stooped down and raised her

in his arms.

As he travelled back to Paris that day, M. Linders formed a

plan which he lost no time in carrying, partially, at least,

into execution. During the next twelvemonth he spent much of

his time in Paris, and went frequently to see his mall

daughter, never without some gift to win her heart, till the

child came to regard his pocket as the inexhaustible source of

boundless surprises, in the shape of toys and cakes and

bonbons. It was not long before she was devoted to her father,

and, her nurse dying when she was a little more than three

years old, M. Linders resolved at once to carry out his idea,

and, instead of placing her with any one else, take possession

of her himself. He removed her accordingly from the country to

Paris, engaged a _bonne_, and henceforth Madelon accompanied him

wherever he went.

CHAPTER V.

Monsieur Linders' System.

My little lady had given Horace Graham a tolerably correct

impression of her life as they had talked together in the

moonlight at Chaudfontaine. When M. Linders took her home with

him--if that may be called home which consisted of wanderings

from one hotel to another--it was with certain fixed ideas

concerning her, which he began by realizing with the success

that not unfrequently attended his ideas when he set himself

with a will to work them out. His child's love and trust he

had already gained, as she had won suddenly for herself a

place in his heart, and he started with the determination that

these relations between them should never be disturbed. She

should be educated for himself; she should be brought up to

see with his eyes, to adopt his views; she should be taught no

troublesome standard of right and wrong by which to measure

him and find wanting; no cold shadow of doubt and reproach

should ever rise between them and force them asunder; and

above all, he would make her happy--she for one should never

turn on him and say, "See, my life is ruined, and it is you

who have done it!" She should know no life, no aims, no wishes

but his; but that life should be so free from care and sorrow

that for once he would be able to congratulate himself on

having made the happiness, instead of the misery, of some one

whom he loved and who loved him.

These were the ideas that M. Linders entertained concerning

Madelon, expressing them to himself in thoughts and language

half genuine, half sentimental, as was his nature. But his

love for his child was genuine enough; and for the fulfilment

of his purpose he was willing to sacrifice much, devoting

himself to her, and giving up time, comfort, and even money,

for the sake of this one small being whom in all the world he

loved, and who was to be taught to love him. He took her about

with him; she associated with his companions; he familiarized

her with all his proceedings, and she came in consequence to

look upon their mode of life as being as much a matter of

course, and a part of the great system of things, as the child

does who sees her father go out to plough every day, or mount

the pulpit every Sunday to preach his sermon. Of course she

did not understand it all; it was his one object in life that

she should not; and fondly as he loved his little Madelon, he

did not scruple to make her welfare subordinate to his own

views. He was careful to keep her within the shady bounds of

that world of no doubtful character, which he found wherever

he went, hovering on the borders of the world of avowed

honesty and respectability, jealously guarding her from every

counter-influence, however good or beneficial. He would not

send her to school, was half unwilling, indeed, that she

should be educated in any way, lest she should come to the

knowledge of good and evil, which he so carefully hid from

her; and he even dismissed her good, kind-hearted bonne, on

overhearing her instruct the child, who could then hardly

speak plain, in some little hymn or prayer, or pious story,

such as nurses delight in teaching their charges. After that

he took care of her himself with the assistance of friendly

landladies at the hotels he frequented, who all took an

interest in and were kind to the little motherless girl, but

were too busy to have any time to spend in teaching her, or

enlarging her ideas; and indeed all the world conspired to

carry out M. Linders' plan; for who would have cared, even had

it been possible, to undertake the ungracious task of opening

the eyes of a child to the real character of a father whom she

loved and believed in so implicitly? And she was so happy,

too! Setting aside any possible injury he might be doing her,

M. Linders was the most devoted of fathers, loving and caring

for her most tenderly, and thinking himself well repaid by the

clinging grasp of her small hand, by the spring of joy with

which she welcomed him after any absence, by her gleeful voice

and laughter, her perfect trust and confidence in him.

There must have been something good and true about this man,

roué and gambler though he was, that, somehow, he himself and

those around him had missed hitherto, but that sprang

willingly into life when appealed to by the innocent faith,

the undoubting love of his little child. Thus much Madelon all

unconsciously accomplished, but more than this she could not

do. M. Linders did not become a reformed character for her

sake: he had never had any particular principles, and

Madelon's loving innocence, which aroused all his best

emotions, had no power to stir in him any noble motives or

high aspirations, which, if they existed at all, were buried

too deep to be awakened by the touch of her small hand. His

misdeeds had never occasioned him much uneasiness, except as

they had affected the conduct of others towards himself; and

he had no reproaches, expressed or implied, to fear from

Madelon. "No one had ever so believed in him before!" he would

sigh, with a feeling not without a certain pathos in its way,

though with the ring of false sentiment characteristic of the

man, and with an apparent want of perception that it was

ignorance rather than belief that was in question. Madelon

believed indeed in his love, for it answered readily to her

daily and hourly appeals, but she cannot be aid to have

believed in his honour and integrity, for she can hardly have

known what they meant, and she made no claims upon _them_. It

was, perhaps, happy for her that the day when she should have

occasion to do so never arrived.

She was not left quite uneducated, however; her father taught

her after his own fashion, and she gained a good deal of

practical knowledge in their many wanderings. When she was six

years old she could talk almost as many languages, could

dance, and could sing a variety of songs with the sweetest,

truest little voice; and by the time she was eight or nine,

she had learned both to write and read, though M. Linders took

care that her range of literature should be limited, and

chiefly confined to books of fairy-tales, in which no examples

drawn from real life could be found, to correct and confuse

the single-sided views she received from him. This was almost

the extent of her learning, but she picked up all sorts of odd

bits of information, in the queer mixed society which M.

Linders seemed everywhere to gather round him, and which

appeared to consist of waifs and strays from every grade of

society--from reckless young English milords, Russian princes,

and Polish counts, soi-disant, down to German students and

penniless artists.

It was, no doubt, fortunate, even at this early age, that

Madelon's little pale face, with its wide-open brown eyes, had

none of the prettiness belonging to the rosy-cheeked, blue-

eyed, golden-haired type of beauty, and that she thus escaped

a world of flattery and nonsense. She was silent too in

company, as a rule, keeping her chatter and laughter, for the

most part, till she was alone with her father, and content

sometimes to sit as quiet as a mouse for a whole evening,

watching what was going on around her; she was too much

accustomed to strangers ever to feel shy with them, but she

cared little for them, unless, as in Horace Graham's case,

they happened to take her fancy.

It must no be imagined, however, that M. Linders was quite

without conscience as regarded his child; there were some

people with whom he took care that she should not associate,

some society into which he never took her. Many an evening did

Madelon spend happily enough while her father was out, in the

snug little parlours of the hotels, where Madame, the

landlady, would be doing up her accounts perhaps, and

Monsieur, the landlord, reposing after the exertions of the

day; whilst Mademoiselle Madelon, seated at the table, would

build card-houses, or play at dominoes, and eat galette and

confitures to her heart's content. Here, too, she would get

queer little glimpses into life--hearing very likely how

Monsieur B. had made off without paying his bill, or how those

trunks that Madame la Comtesse C. had left eighteen months

ago, as a pledge of her return, had been opened at last, and

been found to contain but old clothes, fit for the rag-market;

how a few francs might be advantageously added on here and

there in the bill for the rich English family at the _premier;_

how the gentleman known as No. 5 was looked upon as a

suspicious character; and how Pierre the waiter had been set

to watch the door of No. 8, who had spent three months in the

house without paying a sou, and was daily suspected of

attempting to abscond. All these, and a dozen similar stories,

and half the gossip of the town, would come buzzing round

Madelon's ears as she sat gravely balancing one card one the

top of the other. She heard and comprehended them with such

comprehension as was in her; and no doubt they modified in

some degree her childish views of life, which in these early

days was presented to her, poor child! under no very sublime

or elevated aspect; but they had little interest for her, and

she paid small heed to them. In truth, her passionate love for

her father was, no doubt, at this time her great preservative

and safeguard, ennobling her, as every pure unselfish passion

must ennoble, and by absorbing her thoughts and heart, acting

as a charm against many an unworthy influence around her. The

first sound of his footstep outside was enough to put both

stories and gossip out of her head, and was the signal for her

to spring from her chair, and rush into the passage to meet

him; and a few minutes after they would be seated together in

their room upstairs, she nestling on his knee most likely,

with her arm tight round his neck, while he recounted the

adventures of the evening. His purse would be brought out, and

it was Madelon's special privilege and treat to pour out the

contents on the table and count them over. If M. Linders had

won it was a little fête for both--calculations as to how it

should be spent, where they should go the next day, what new

toy, or frock, or trinket should be bought; if he had lost,

there would be a moment of discouragement perhaps, and then

Madelon would say,

"It does not signify, papa, does it?--you will win to-morrow,

you know."

As for M. Linders, the thought of the little, eager innocent

face that would greet his return home was the brightest and

purest vision that lighted his dark and wayward life, and he

appealed to his child's sympathy and encouragement in a way

that had something touching in it, showing as it did the

gentler side of a man who was always reckless, and could be

hard and merciless enough sometimes; but he was never anything

but tender with his little Madelon, and one can fancy the two

sitting together, as she counts over the little gold pieces

shining in the candlelight. Once, not long after his marriage,

he had appealed to his wife in the same way, when, after an

unusual run of luck, he had returned in triumph with his

winnings. She, poor girl, looked first at them and then at

him, with a piteous little attempt at a smile; then suddenly

burst into tears, and turned away. It was the first and last

time he tried to win her sympathy in these matters, and was,

perhaps, the beginning of the sort of estrangement that grew

up between them.

These were happy evenings, Madelon thought, but she found

those happier still when her father was at home, generally

with one or two men who would come in to play cards with him.

They were always good-natured and kind to the little girl who

sat so still and close to her father's side, watching the game

with her quick, intelligent eyes; though some of them, foolish

smooth-faced lads, perhaps, would go away cursing the fate

that had ever led them across M. Linders' path, and carrying

an undying hatred in their hearts for the handsome courteous

man who had enticed them on to ruin. How M. Linders lured

these poor birds into the snare, and by what means he plucked

them when there, Madelon never knew; all that belonged to the

darker side of this character, which she never fully

understood, and on which, for her sake, we will not dwell.

Most of all, however, did Madelon enjoy being at the German

watering-places, for then she went out with her father

constantly. The fair-haired, brown-eyed little girl was almost

as well-known in the Kursaals of Homburg and Wiesbaden as the

famous gambler himself, as evening after evening they entered

the great lighted salons together, and took their places

amongst the motley crowd gathered round the long green tables.

There she would remain contented for hours, sometimes sitting

on his knee, sometimes herself staking a florin or two--"to

change the luck," M. Linders would say laughingly,--sometimes

wearied out, curled up fast asleep in a corner of one of the

sofas. Then there were the theatres, to which her father often

took her, and where, with delighted, wondering eyes, she made

acquaintance with most of the best operas and learnt to sing

half Bellini's and Weber's music in her clear little voice.

More than once, too, she was taken behind the scenes, where

she saw so much of the mysteries of stage-working and

carpentering as would have destroyed the illusions of an older

person; but it did not make much difference to her; the next

time she found herself in the stalls or balcony she forget all

about what was going on behind, and was as much enchanted as

ever with the fine results prepared for the public gaze.

On other nights there would be the balls, always a supreme

enjoyment. It must be owned that Madelon took great pleasure

in seeing her small person arrayed in a smart frock; and she

was never weary of admiring the big rooms with their gilded

furniture, and mirrors, and brilliant lights, and polished

floors, where a crowd of gay people would be twirling about to

the sound of the music. She danced like a little fairy, too,

with pure delight in the mere motion, was never tired, and

rarely sat down; for Mademoiselle, who generally held herself

rather aloof from strangers, would be pleased on these

occasions to put on a little winning graciousness, giving her

hand with the air of a small princess to any one soliciting

the honour of a dance; and she was seldom without some tall

partner, attracted by her _gentillesse_ and naïve prattle--a

moustached Austrian or Prussian officer, perhaps, in white or

blue uniform, or one of her counts or barons, with a bit of

ribbon dangling from his button-hole; or, if all else failed,

there was always her father, who was ever ready to indulge her

in any of her fancies, and never resisted her coaxing pleading

for one more dance.

These were the evenings; for the days there were pleasures

enough too, though of a simpler kind, and more profitable,

perhaps, for our poor little Madelon, in her gay unconscious

dance through that mad Vanity Fair, innocent though it was for

her as yet.

Except on some special emergency, M. Linders rarely went to

the gambling tables during the day. He had a theory that

daylight was prejudicial to his prosperity, and that it was

only at night that he could play there with any fair chance of

success; but he not unfrequently had other business of a

similar nature on hand to occupy his mornings and afternoons;

and when he was engaged or absent, Madelon, with the happy

adaptability of a solitary child, had no difficulty in amusing

herself alone with her toys, and picture-books, and dolls. At

other times, when her father was at leisure, there would be

walks with him, long afternoons spent in the gay Kursaal

gardens, listening to the bands of music; and on idle days,

which with M. Linders were neither few nor far between,

excursions perhaps into the country, sometimes the two alone,

but more frequently accompanied by one or two of M. Linders'

companions. There they would dine at some rustic Gasthof, and

afterwards, whilst her father and his friends smoked, drank

their Rhine wine, and brought out the inevitable cards and

dice in the shady, vine-trellised garden, Madelon, wandering

about here and there, in and out, through yard and court, and

garden and kitchen, poking her small nose everywhere, gained

much primary information on many subjects, from the growing of

cabbages to the making sauerkraut--from the laying of eggs by

ever-hopeful hens, to their final fulfilment of a ruthless

destiny in a frying-pan. In return, she was not unwilling to

impart to the good Hausfrau, and her troop of little ones and

retainers, many details concerning her town life; and might

sometimes be found, perched on the kitchen table, relating

long histories to an admiring audience, in which the blue silk

frocks and tall partners made no small figure, one may be

sure.

It was a golden childhood. Even in after years, when, reading

the history of these early days in a new light, she suffered a

pang for almost every pleasure she had then enjoyed, even then

Madelon maintained that her childhood had been one of

unclouded happiness, such as few children know. The sudden

changes of fortune, from splendour to poverty of the shabbiest

description, the reckless, dishonest expenditure, and the

endless debts consequent on it; the means--doubtful to say the

least of them--employed by M. Linders for procuring money; the

sense of alienation from all that is best, and noblest, and

truest in life;--all these, which had gone far to make up the

sum of her mother's misery, affected our Madelon hardly at

all. Some of them she did not know of; the rest she took as a

matter of course. In truth, it mattered little to her whether

they lived in a big hotel or a little one; whether the debts

were paid or unpaid; whether money were forthcoming or not;

she never felt the want of it, we may be sure. If she did not

have some promised fête or amusement on one day, it was

certain to come on another; and even the one or two occasions

on which M. Linders, absolutely unable to leave an hotel until

he had paid part of what he owed there, had been obliged to

confiscate everything, caused her no uneasiness. The next

week, very likely, she had other trinkets and knick-knacks,

newer and prettier; and indeed, so long as she had her father,

she cared for little else. In any small childish misfortune or

ailment she had but to run to him to find help, and sympathy,

and caresses; and she had no grief or care in these first

years for which these were not a sufficient remedy.

Amidst all the miserable failures, and more unworthy successes

of a wasted life, M. Linders gained at least one legitimate

triumph, when he won his child's undying love and gratitude.

All her life long, one may fancy, would Madelon cherish the

remembrance of his unceasing tenderness, of his unwearying

love for his little girl, which showed itself in a thousand

different ways, and which, with one warm, loving little heart,

at any rate, would ever go far to cover a multitude of sins.

The only drawback to her perfect content in these early days

was the presence of her uncle Charles, whom she could not

bear, and who, for his part, looked upon her as a mere

encumbrance, and her being with them at all as a piece of

fatuity on the part of his brother-in-law. There were constant

skirmishes between them while they were together; but even

these ceased after a time, for Moore, who, ever since his

sister's marriage, had clung fitfully to M. Linders, as a

luckier and more prosperous man than himself, was accustomed

to be absent on his own account for months together, and

during one of these solitary journeys he died, about two years

after Horace Graham had seen him at Chaudfontaine. Henceforth

Madelon and her father were alone.

Madelon, then, by the time she was eight years old, had learnt

to sing, dance, speak several languages, to write, to play

_rouge et noir_, and _roulette_, and indeed _piquet_ and _écarté_,

too, to great perfection, and to read books of fairy tales. At

ten years old, her education was still at the same point; and

it must be owned that, however varied and sufficient for the

purposes of the moment, it left open a wide field for labour

in the future years; though M. Linders appeared perfectly

satisfied with the results of his teaching so far, and showed

no particular desire to enlarge her ideas upon any point. As

for religion, no wild Arab of our London streets ever knew or

heard less about it than did our little Madelon; or was left

more utterly uninstructed in its simplest truths and dogmas.

What M. Linders' religious beliefs were, or whether he had any

at all, we need not inquire. He at least took care that none

should be instilled into his child's mind; feeling, probably,

that under whatever form they were presented to her, they

would assuredly clash sooner or later with his peculiar system

of education. For himself, his opinions on such matters were

expressed when occasion arose, only in certain unvarying and

vehement declamations against priests and nuns--the latter

particularly, where his general sense of aversion to a class

in the abstract, became specific and definite, when he looked

upon that class as represented in the person of his sister

Thérèse.

Of the outward forms and ceremonies of religion Madelon could

not, indeed, remain entirely ignorant, living constantly, as

she did, in Roman Catholic countries; but her very familiarity

with these from her babyhood robbed them in great measure of

the interest they might otherwise have excited in her mind,

and their significance she was never taught to understand. As

a rule, a child must have its attention drawn in some

particular way to its everyday surroundings, or they must

strike it in some new and unfamiliar light, before they rouse

more than a passing curiosity; and though Madelon would

sometimes question her father as to the meaning and intention

of this or that procession passing along the streets, he found

no difficulty in putting her off with vague answers. It was a

wedding or a funeral, he would say, or connected with some

other ordinary event, which Madelon knew to be of daily

recurrence; though none such had as yet had part in the

economy of her small world; and priests, and nuns, and monks

became classed, without difficulty, in her mind, with doctors

and soldiers, and the mass of people generally, who made money

in a different way from her father, with whom, therefore, she

seldom came into personal contact, and with whom she had

little to do--money making being still her one idea of the aim

and business of life.

The first time, however, that she ever entered a church, when

she was little more than nine years old, was an experience in

her life, and this was the occasion of it. It was in a French

provincial town, where M. Linders had stopped for a day on

business--only for one day, but that Madelon was to spend for

the most part alone; for her father, occupied with his

affairs, was obliged to go out very early, and leave her to

her own devices; and very dull she found them, after the first

hour or two. She was a child of many resources, it is true,

but these will come to an end when a little girl of nine years

old, with books and dolls all packed up, has to amuse herself

for ever so many hours in a dull country hotel, an hotel, too,

which was quite strange to her, and where she could not,

therefore, fall back upon the society and conversation of a

friendly landlady. Madelon wandered upstairs and downstairs,

looked out of all the windows she could get at, and at last

stood leaning against the hall-door, which opened on to the

front courtyard. It was very quiet and very dull, nothing

moving anywhere; no one crossed the square, sunny space, paved

with little stones, and adorned with the usual round-topped

trees, in green boxes. Inside the house there was an

occasional clatter of plates and dishes, or the resonant nasal

cry of "Auguste," or "Henri," from one or other of the

servants, but that was all. Madelon found it too tiresome; the

_porte-cochère_ stood half open, she crossed the courtyard and

peeped out. She saw a quiet, sunny street, with not much more

life or movement than there was within, but still a little

better. Over the high walls surrounding the houses opposite

green trees were waving; at one end of the street there was

the gleam of a river, a bridge, and a row of poplars; the

other end she could not see, for the street made a bend, and a

fountain with dribbling water filled up the angle. Presently a

little boy in a blue blouse, and a little girl with a tight

round white cap, came up to the stone basin, each with a

pitcher to fill; they were a long time about it, for what

would be pleasanter, on this hot summer morning, than to stand

dabbling one's fingers in the cool water? Madelon watched them

till she became possessed with an irresistible desire to do

the same. It was only a few steps off, and though she was

strictly forbidden by her father ever to go out alone, still--

she had so seldom an opportunity of being naughty, that her

present consciousness of disobedience rather added, perhaps,

to the zest of the adventure. She would go just for this once--

and in another moment she was out in the street. The little

boy and girl fled with full pitchers as she came up to the

fountain, suddenly awakened to a sense of the waste of time in

which they had been indulging; but that made no difference to

Madelon; she stood gazing with mute admiration at the open-

mouthed monsters, from whose wide jaws the water trickled into

the basin below; and then she held her hands to catch the

drops till they were quite cold, and thought it the best play

she had ever known. By-the-by, however, she began to look

about her in search of further excitement, and, emboldened by

success, turned the corner of the street, and ventured out of

sight of the hotel. On one side large _portes-cochères_ at

intervals, shutting in the white, green-shuttered houses, that

appeared beyond; on the other a long, high, blank wall, with

nothing to be seen above it, and one small arched doorway

about half-way down. This was the shady side; and Madelon,

crossing over to it, arrived at the arched door, and stood for

a moment contemplating it, wondering what could be inside.

She was not left long in doubt, for two priests crossed the

road, and pushed open the door, without seeing the child, who,

urged by a spirit of curiosity, crept unnoticed after them,

and suddenly found herself in a cloister, running round a

quadrangle, on one side of which rose the walls and spires and

buttresses of a great church; in the centre a carefully kept

space of smooth grass. Madelon stood for a moment motionless

with delight; it reminded her of a scene in some opera or play

to which she had been in Paris with her father, but, oh! how

much more beautiful, and all real! The sunlight streamed

through the tracery of the cloisters, and fell chequered with

sharp shadows on the pavement; the bright blue sky was crossed

with pinnacles and spires, and there was an echo of music from

the church which lured her on. The two priests walked quickly

along, she followed, and all three entered the building by a

side door together.

A vast, dim church, with long aisles and lofty pillars, which

seemed to Madeleine's unpractised eye, fresh from the outer

glare, to vanish in infinite mysterious gloom; a blaze of

light, at the far-off high altar, with its priests, and

incense, and gorgeous garments and tall candles; on every side

shrines and tapers, and pictures, awful, agonised,

compassionate Saviours, sad, tender Madonnas; a great silent

multitude of kneeling people, and, above all, the organ

peeling out, wave after wave of sound, which seemed to strike

her, surround her, thrill her with a sense of--what? What was

it all? What did it all mean? An awful instinct suddenly woke

in the child's heart, painfully struggling with inarticulate

cries, as it were, to make itself understood, even to herself.

Wholly inarticulate, for she had been taught no words that

could express, however feebly, these vague yearnings, these

unutterable longings, suddenly stirring in her heart. This

wonderful, solemn music, this place, so strange, so separate

from any other she had known, what was it? what did it all

mean? Ah, yes, what did it all mean? A little girl, no older

than herself, who knelt close by the door, with careless eyes

that roamed everywhere, and stared wondering at Madelon's

cotton frock and rough uncovered little head, could have

explained it all very well; she had a fine gilt prayer-book in

her hand, and knew most of her Catechism, and could have

related the history of all the saints in the church; she did

not find it at all impressive, though she liked coming well

enough on these grand fête-days, when everyone wore their best

clothes, and she could put on her very newest frock. But our

little stray Madelon, who knew of none of all these things,

could find nothing better to do at last than to creep into a

dark corner, between a side chapel and a confessional, crouch

down, and begin to sob with all her heart.

Presently the music ceased, and the people went pouring out of

the great doors of the church. Madelon, roused by the movement

around her, looked up, dried her eyes, and came out of her

corner; then, following the stream, found herself once more

outside, not in the cloister by the door of which she had

entered, but at the top of a wide flight of steps, leading

down to a large sunny Place, surrounded with houses, where a

fair was going on. She was fairly bewildered; she had never

been in the town before, and though, in fact, not very far

from the hotel where she was staying, she felt completely

lost.

As she stood still for a moment, in the midst of the

dispersing crowd, looking scared and dazed enough very likely,

she once more attracted the attention of the little girl who

had been kneeling near her in the church, and who now pointed

her out to her parents, good, substantial-looking bourgeois.

"_Comme elle a l'air drôle_," said the child, "with her hair all

rough, and that old cotton frock!"

"She looks as if she had lost someone," says the kindly

mother. "I will ask her."

"No, she had not lost anyone," Madelon said, in answer to her

inquiries, "but she did not know where she was; could Madame

tell her the way to the Hôtel de l'Aigle d'Or?"

"It is quite near," Madame answered; "we are going that way;

if you like to come with us, we will show it to you."

So Madelon followed the three down the broad steps, and out

into the Place, where she looked a queer figure enough,

perhaps, in the midst of all the gay holiday-folk who were

gathered round the booths and stalls. She did not concern

herself about that, however, for her mind was still full of

what she had seen and heard in the church; and she walked on

silently, till presently Madame, with some natural curiosity

as to this small waif and stray she had picked up, said, "Are

you staying at the hotel, _ma petite?_"

"Yes," answered Madelon, "we came there last night."

"And how was it you went to church all alone?"

"Papa had to go out," says Madelon, getting rather red and

confused, "and I was so dull by myself, and I--I went out into

the street, and got into the church by a little door at the

side--not that other one we came out at just now; so I did not

know where I was, nor the way back again."

"Then you are a stranger here, and have never been to the

church before?" said Monsieur.

"No," said Madelon; and then, full of her own ideas, she asked

abruptly--"what was everyone doing in there?"

"In there!--in the church, do you mean?"

"Yes, in the church--what was everyone doing?"

"But do you not know, then," said the mother, "that it is to-

day a great fête--the fête of the Assumption?"

"No," said Madelon, "I did not know. Was that why so many

people were there? What were they doing?" she persisted.

"How do you mean?--do you not go the _messe_ every Sunday?" said

Madame, surprised.

"To the _messe!_" answered Madelon--"what is that? I never was in

a church before."

"Never in a church before!" echoed a chorus of three

astonished voices, while Monsieur added--"Never in this church,

you mean."

"No," answered Madelon, "it is the first time I ever went into

a church at all."

"But, _mon enfant_," said the mother, "you are big enough to

have gone to church long before this. Why, you must be eight

or nine years old, and Nanette here went to the _grand' messe_

before she was five--did you not, Nanette?"

"Yes," says Nanette, with a further sense of superiority added

to that already induced by the contrast of her new white

muslin frock with Madelon's somewhat limp exterior.

"And never missed it for a single Sunday of fête-day since,"

continued Madame, "except last year, when she had the

measles."

"Do you go there every Sunday?" asked Madelon of the child.

"Yes, every Sunday and fête-days. Would you like to see my new

Paroissien? My god-father gave it to me on my last birthday."

"And is it always like to-day, with all the singing, and

music, and people?"

"Yes, always the same, only not always quite so grand, you

know, because to-day is a great fête. Why don't you go to

church always?"

"She is perhaps a little Protestant," suggested the father,

"and goes to the Temple. Is that not it, my child?"

"I do not know," said Madelon, bewildered; "I never went to

any Temple, and I never heard of Protestants. Papa never took

me to church; but then we do not live here, you know."

"But in other churches it is the same--everywhere," cries

Madame.

"What, in all the big churches in Paris, and everywhere?" said

Madelon. "I did not know; I never went into them, but I will

ask papa to take me there now." Then, recurring to her first

difficulty, she repeated, "But what do people go there for?"

"Mais--pour prier le bon Dieu!" said the good man.

"I do not understand," said Madelon, despairingly. "What does

that mean? What were the music and the lights for, and what

were all the pictures about?"

"But is it, then, possible, _ma petite_, that you have had no

one to teach you all these things? And on Sundays, what do you

do then?" said the mother, while Nanette stared more and more

at Madelon, with round eyes.

"We generally go into the country on Sundays," said Madelon.

"Papa never goes to church, I am sure, or he would have taken

me. I will ask him to let me go again--I like it very much." It

was at this moment that they turned into the street in which

stood the hotel. "Ah! there is papa," cried Madelon, rushing

forward as she saw him coming towards them, and springing into

his arms. He had returned to the hotel for a late _déjeuner_,

and was in terrible dismay when Madelon, being sought for, was

nowhere to be found. One of the waiters said he had seen her

run out of the courtyard, and M. Linders was just going out to

look for her.

"_Mon Dieu!_ Madelon," he cried, "where, then, have you been?"

"I ran out, papa," said Madelon, abashed. "I am very sorry--I

will not do it again. I lost myself, but Monsieur and Madame

here showed me the way back."

Her friendly guides stood watching the two for a moment, as,

after a thousand thanks and acknowledgments, they entered the

hotel together.

"It is singular," said Madame; "he is handsome, and looks like

a gentleman. How can anyone bring up a little child like that

in such ignorance? She can have no mother, _pauvre petite!_"

"What an odd little girl, Maman," cried Nanette, "never to

have been to church before, and not to know why people go!"

"_Chut_, Nanette!" said her father. "Thou also woudst have known

nothing, unless some good friends had taught thee." And so

these kindly people went their way.

Madelon, meanwhile, was relating all her adventures to her

father. He was too rejoiced at having found her again to scold

her for running away; but he was greatly put out,

nevertheless, as he listened to her little history. Here,

then, was en emergency, such as he had dimly foreseen, and

done much to avoid, which yet had come upon him unawares,

without fault of his, and which he was quite unprepared to

meet. He did not, indeed, fully understand its importance, nor

all that was passing in his child's mind; but he did perceive

that she had caught a glimpse through doors he had vainly

tried to keep closed to her, and that that one glance had so

aroused her curiosity and interest, that it would be less easy

than usual to satisfy her.

"Why do you never go to church, papa?" she was asking. "Why do

you not take me? It was so beautiful, and there were such

numbers of people. Why do we not go?"

"I don't care about it myself," he answered, at last, "but you

shall go again some day, _ma petite_, if you like it so much."

"May I?" said Madelon. "And will you take me, papa? What makes

so many people go? Madame said they went every Sunday and _fête_

day."

"I suppose they like it," answered M. Linders. "Some people go

every day, and all day long--nuns, for instance, who have

nothing else to do."

"It is, then, when people have nothing else to do that they

go?" asked Madelon, misunderstanding him, with much

simplicity.

"Something like it," answered M. Linders, rather grimly; then,

with a momentary compunction, added, "Not precisely. They do

it also, I suppose, because they think it right."

"And do you not think it right, papa? Why should they? I have

seen people coming out of church before, but I never knew what

it was like inside. I _may_ go again some day?"

"When you are older, my child, I will take you again,

perhaps."

"But that little girl Nanette, papa, was only five years old

when she went first, her mother said, and I have never been at

all," said Madelon, feeling rather aggrieved.

"Well, when we go to Florence next winter, Madelon, you shall

visit all the churches. They are much more splendid than

these, and have the most beautiful pictures, which I should

like you to see."

"And will there be music, and lights, and flowers there, the

same as here, papa?"

"Oh! for that, it is much the same everywhere," replied M.

Linders. "People are much alike all the world over, as you

will find, Madelon. Priests, and mummery, and a gaping crowd,

to stare and say, 'How wonderful! how beautiful!' as you do

now, _ma petite;_ but you shall know better some day."

He spoke with a certain bitterness that Madelon did not

understand, any more than she did his little speech; but it

silenced her for a moment, and then she said more timidly,

"But, papa----"

"Well, Madelon!"

"But, papa, he said--_ce Monsieur_--he said that people go to

church _pour prier le bon Dieu_. What did he mean? We often say

'_Mon Dieu_,' and I have heard them talk of _le bon Dieu;_ is that

the same? Who is He then--_le bon Dieu?_"

M. Linders did not at once reply. Madelon was looking up into

his face with wide-open perplexed eyes, frowning a little with

an unusual effort of thought, with the endeavour to penetrate

a momentary mystery, which she instinctively felt lay

somewhere, and which she looked to him to explain; and he

_could_ not give her a careless, mocking answer; he sat staring

blankly at her for a few seconds, and then said slowly,

"I cannot tell you."

"Do you not know, papa?"

"Yes, yes, certainly I know," he answered hastily, and with

some annoyance; "but--in short, Madelon, you are too young to

trouble your head about these things; you cannot understand

them possibly; when you are older you shall have them

explained to you."

"When, papa?"

"Oh, I don't know--one of these days, when you are a great

girl, grown up."

"And you can't tell me now?" said Madelon, a little wistfully;

"but you will let me go to the church again before that? Oh,

indeed it was beautiful, with the lights, and the singing, and

the music. Do you know, papa, it made me cry," she added, in a

half whisper.

"_Vraiment!_" said M. Linders, with some contempt in his voice,

and a slight, involuntary shrug of the shoulders.

The contempt was for a class of emotion with which he had no

sympathy, and for that which he imagined had called it forth;

not for his little Madelon, nor for her expression of it. But

the child shrank back, blushing scarlet. He saw his mistake,

perhaps, for he drew her towards him again, and with a tender

caress and word tried to turn her thoughts in another

direction; but it was too late; the impression had been made,

and could never again be effaced. All unconsciously, with that

one inadvertent word, M. Linders had raised the first slight

barrier between himself and his child, had given the first

shock to that confidence which he had fondly hoped was ever to

exist undisturbed between them. In the most sacred hour her

short life had yet known, Madeleine had appealed to him for

help and sympathy, and she had been repulsed without finding

either. She did not indeed view it in that light, nor believe

in and love him the less; she only thought she must have been

foolish; but she took well to heart the lesson that she should

henceforth keep such folly to herself--as far as he was

concerned, at any rate.

As for M. Linders, this little conversation left him alarmed,

perplexed, uneasy. What if, after all, this small being whom

he had proposed to identify, as it were, with himself, by

teaching her to see with his eyes, to apprehend with his

understanding, what if she were beginning to develop an

independent soul, to have thoughts, notions, ideas of her own,

perhaps, to look out into life with eager eyes that would

penetrate beyond the narrow horizon it had pleased him to fix

as her range of vision, to ask questions whose answers might

lead to awkward conclusions? For the moment it seemed to him

that his whole system of education, which had worked so well

hitherto, was beginning to totter, ready at any time, it might

be, to fall into ruins, leaving him and his child vainly

calling to each other across an ever-widening, impassable

gulf. Already he foresaw as possible results all that he had

most wished to avoid, and felt himself powerless to avert

them; for, however ready to alienate her from good influences,

and expose her to bad ones, he yet shrank from inculcating

falsehood and wrong by precept. With a boy it would have been

different, and he might have had little hesitation in bringing

him up, by both precept and example, in the way he was to go;

but with his little innocent woman-child--no, it was

impossible. She must be left to the silent and negative

teachings of surrounding influences, and in ignorance of all

others; and what if these should fail? Perhaps he over-

estimated the immediate danger, not taking sufficiently into

account the strength and loyalty of her affection for him;

but, on the other hand, he perhaps undervalued the depth and

force of those feelings to the consciousness of which she had

first been roused that day. "It shall not occur again, and in

time she will forget all about it," was his first conclusion.

His second was perhaps wiser in his generation, taking into

consideration a wider range of probabilities. "No," he

reflected, "there has been an error somewhere. I should have

accustomed Madelon to all these things, and then she would

have thought nothing of them. Well, that shall be remedied,

for she shall go to every church in Florence, and so get used

to them."

CHAPTER VI.

At Florence.

If we have dwelt with disproportionate detail on the above

little incident, we must be forgiven in consideration of its

real importance to our Madeleine, marking, as it did, the

commencement of a new era in her life. The sudden inspiration

that had kindled for a moment in the great church died away,

indeed, as newer impressions more imperatively claimed her

attention; but the memory of it remained as a starting point

to which any similar sensations subsequently recurring might

be referred, as a phenomenon which seemed to contain within

itself the germ and possible explanation of a thousand vague

aspirations, yearnings which began about this time to spring

up in her mind, and which almost unconsciously linked

themselves with that solemn hour the remembrance of which,

after her conversation with her father, she had set apart in

her own heart, to be pondered on from time to time, but in

silence,--a reticence too natural and legitimate not to be

followed by a hundred others of a similar kind.

M. Linders, for reasons of his own, with which we need not

concern ourselves here, spent the following autumn and winter

in Florence, establishing himself in an apartment for the

season, contrary to his usual practice of living in hotels;

and this was how it happened that Madelon made two friends who

introduced quite a new element into her life, one which, under

other circumstances, might hardly have entered into it as a

principle of education at all. The rooms M. Linders had taken

were on the third floor of a large palazzo with many

occupants, where a hundred feet daily passed up and down the

common staircase, the number of steps they had to tread

increasing for the most part in direct proportion to their

descent in the social grade which, with sufficiently imposing

representatives on the first floor, reached its minimum, in

point of wealth and station, in the fifth storey garret. On

the same floor as Madelon and her father, but on the opposite

side of the corridor, lived an American artist; and M. Linders

had not been a week in the house before he recognized in him

an ancient _confrère_ of his old Parisian artist days, who,

after many wanderings to and fro on the earth, had finally

settled himself in Florence. The old intimacy was renewed

without difficulty on either side. M. Linders was made free of

the American's _atelier_, and he, for his part, willingly smoked

his pipe of an evening in the Frenchman's little salon. He was

a great black-bearded yellow-faced fellow, with a certain

careless joviality about him, that made him popular, though

leading a not very respectable life; always extravagant,

always in debt, and not averse to a little gambling and

betting when they came in his way. He was a sufficiently

congenial spirit for M. Linders to associate with freely; but

he was kind-hearted, honourable after his own fashion, and had

redeeming points in an honest enthusiasm, in a profound

conviction of the grand possibilities of life in general, and

of his art in particular. He was no great artist, and his

business consisted mainly in making copies of well-known

pictures, which he did with great skill, so that they always

commanded a ready sale in the Florence market. But he also

painted a variety of original subjects; and, in unambitious

moments, occasionally surprised himself by producing some

charming little picture which encouraged him to persevere in

this branch of his art.

This man took a great fancy to Madelon, in the first instance

from hearing how prettily and deftly she spoke English; and

she, after holding herself aloof in dignified reserve for

three days from this new acquaintance, was suddenly won over

in a visit to his _atelier_, which henceforth became to her a

sort of wonderland, a treasure domain, where she might come

and go as she pleased, and where, from beneath much

accumulated dust, persevering fingers might extract inimagined

prizes, in the shape of sketches, drawings, plaster casts,

prints, and divers queer possessions of different kinds. After

this, she soon became fast friends with the American, who was

very kind and good-natured to her, and M. Linders' promise

that she should see all the churches in Florence was fulfilled

by the artist. He took her to visit both them and the

galleries, showed her the famous pictures, and told her the

names of their painters; and the genuine reverence with which

he gazed on them, his ever-fresh enjoyment and appreciation of

them, impressed her, child as she was, far more than any mere

expressions of admiration or technical explanations of their

merits would have done.

Sometimes, if she accompanied him to any of the churches where

he happened to be copying a picture, he would leave her to

wander about alone, and they were strange weird hours that she

spent in this way. She did not indeed again assist at any of

the great church ceremonies, but the silent spaces of these

chill, grand, solemn interiors impressed her scarcely less

with a sense of mysterious awe. Tapers twinkled in dim side

chapels, pictures and mosaics looked down on her from above,

rare footsteps echoed along the marble pavements, silent

figures knelt about here and there, pillars, marbles, statues

gleamed, and heavy doors and curtains shut in the shadowy,

echoing, silent place from the sunshine, and blue sky, and

many coloured life without. Madelon, wandering about in the

gloom, gliding softly into every nook and corner, gazing at

tombs and decorated altars and pictures, wondered more and

more at this strange new world in which she found herself, and

which she had no one to interpret to her. It had a mysterious

attraction for her, as nothing had ever had before; and yet it

was almost a relief at last to escape again into the warm,

sunny out-of-door life, to walk home with the painter through

the bright narrow streets, listening to his gay careless talk,

and lingering, perhaps, at some stall, in the busy market-

place, to buy grapes and figs; and then to take a walk with

her father into the country, where roses nodded at her over

garden walls, and vines were yellowing beneath the autumn sky.

Her sensitive perception of beauty and grandeur was so much

greater than her power of grasping and comprehending them,

that her poor little mind became oppressed and bewildered by

the disproportion between the vividness with which she

received new impressions, and her ability for seizing their

meaning.

The pictures themselves, which, before long, she learnt to

delight in, and even in some sort to appreciate, were a

perpetual source of perplexity to her in the unknown subjects

they represented. Her want of knowledge in such matters was so

complete that her American friend, who, no doubt, took it for

granted that she had been brought up in the religion of the

country, never even guessed at it, not imagining that a child

could remain so utterly uninstructed in the simple facts and

histories; and, somehow, Madelon divined this, and began to

have a shy reluctance in asking questions which would betray

an unsuspected ignorance. "This is such or such a Madonna,"

the artist would say; "there you see St. Elizabeth, and that

is St. John the Baptist, you know." Or he would point out St.

Agnes, or St. Cecilia, or St. Catherine, as the case might be.

"Who was St. Catherine?" Madelon ventured to ask one day.

"Did you never hear of her?" he answered. "Well then, I will

tell you all about her. There were, in fact, two St.

Catherines, but this one here, who, you see, has a wheel,

lived long before the other. There once dwelt in Alexandria a

lovely and accomplished maiden--" And he would no doubt have

related to her the whole of the beautiful old mystical legend;

but her father, who happened to be with them that day,

interrupted him.

"Don't stuff the child's head with that nonsense," he said,

and, perhaps, afterwards gave his friend a hint; for Madelon

heard no more about the saints, and was left to puzzle out

meanings and stories for the pictures for herself--and queer

enough ones she often made, very likely. On the other hand,

the American, who liked to talk to her in his own tongue, and

to make her chatter to him in return, would tell her many a

story of the old master painters, of Cimabue and the boy

Giotto, of Lionardo da Vinci, and half a dozen others; old,

old tales of the days when, as we sometimes fancy, looking

back through the mist of centuries, there were giants on the

earth, but all new and fresh to our little Madelon, and with a

touch or romance and poetry about them as told by the

enthusiastic artist, which readily seized her imagination;

indeed he himself, with his black velvet cap, and short pipe,

and old coat, became somehow ennobled and idealised in her

simple mind by his association through his art with the mighty

men he was teaching her to reverence.

Madelon spent much of her time in the painter's _atelier_, for

her father took it into his head this winter to try his hand

once more at his long-neglected art, and, armed with brushes

and palette, passed many of his leisure hours in his friend's

society. We cannot accredit M. Linders with any profound

penetration, or with any subtle perception of what was working

in his little daughter's mind, but with the most far-reaching

wisdom he could hardly have devised better means, at this

crisis in her life, for maintaining his old hold upon her, and

keeping up the sense of sympathy between them, which had in

one instance been disturbed and endangered.

She was just beginning to be conscious of the existence of a

new and glorious world, where money-making was, on the whole,

in abeyance, and roulette-tables and croupiers had apparently

no existence at all; and the sight of her father at his easel

day after day, at once connected him with it, as it were,

since he also could produce pictures--_tout comme un autre_. Then

M. Linders could talk well on most subjects, and in the

discussions that the two men would not unfrequently hold

concerning pictures, Madelon was too young, and had too strong

a conviction of her father's perfect wisdom, to discern

between his mere clever knowledge of art and the American's

pure love and enthusiasm; or if, with some instinctive sense

of the difference, she turned more readily to the latter for

information, that was because it was his _métier;_ whereas with

papa----Oh! with papa it was only an amusement; his business was

of quite another kind.

The American amused himself by painting Madelon more than

once; and she made a famous little model, sitting still and

patiently for hours to him and to her father, who had a knack

of producing any number of little, affected, meretricious

pictures, in the worst possible style and taste. Years

afterwards, Madelon revisited the studio, where the black-

bearded friendly American, grown a little bent and a little

grey, was still stepping backwards and forwards before the

same easel standing in the old place; orange and pomegranate

trees still bloomed in the windows; footsteps still passed up

and down the long corridor outside where her light childish

ones had so often echoed; the old properties hung about on the

walls; and there, amongst dusty rolls piled up in a corner,

Madelon came upon more than one portrait of herself, a pale-

faced, curly-headed child, who looked out at her from the

canvas with wistful brown eyes that seemed full of the

thoughts that at that time had begun to agitate her poor

little brain. How the sight of them brought back the old

vanished days! How it stirred within her sudden tender

recollections of the quiet hours when, dressed out in some

quaint head-gear, or _contadina_ costume, or merely in her own

everyday frock, she had sat perched up on a high stool, or on

a pile of boxes, dreaming to herself, or listening to the talk

between the two men.

"That man is a fool," the American would exclaim, dashing his

brush across a whole morning's work; "that man is a

presumptuous fool who, here in Florence, here where those

others have lived and died, dares to stand before an easel and

imagine that he can paint--and I have been that man!" He was

wont to grow noisy and loquacious over his failures--not moody

and dumb, as some men do.

"You concern yourself too much," M. Linders would reply

calmly, putting the finishing touch to Madelon as a _bergère_

standing in the midst of a flock of sheep, and a green

landscape--like the enlarged top of a _bonbonnière_. "You are too

ambitious, _mon cher_--you are little, and want to be great--hence

your discomfort; whilst I, who am little, and know it, remain

content."

"May I be spared such content!" growled the other, who was

daily exasperated by the atrocities his friend produced by way

of pictures. It was beyond his comprehension how any man could

paint such to his disgrace, and then calmly contemplate them

as the work of his own hands. "Heaven preserve me from such

content, I say!"

"But it is there you are all in the wrong," says M. Linders,

quite unmoved by his companion's uncomplimentary energy. "You

agitate, you disturb yourself with the idea that some day you

will become something great--you begin to compare yourself with

these men whose works you are for ever copying, with who

knows? --with Raffaelle, with Da Vinci----"

"I compare myself with them!" cries the American, interrupting

him. "I! No, mon ami, I am not quite such a fool as that. I

reverence them, I adore their memory, I bow down before their

wonderful genius"--and as he spoke he lifted his cap from his

head, suiting his action to his words--"but compare myself! --

I!" Then picking up his brush again, he added, "But the world

needs its little men as well as its great ones--at any rate,

the little ones need their _pot au feu;_ so to work again.

_Allons, ma petite_, your head a little more this way."

This little conversation, which occurred nearly at the

beginning of their acquaintance, the painter's words and

manner, his energy, his simple, dignified gesture as he raised

his cap--all made a great impression on our Madelon; it was

indeed one of her first lessons in that hero-worship whereby

lesser minds are brought into _rapport_ with great ones; and,

even while they reverence afar off, exultingly feel that they

in some sort share in their genius through their power of

appreciating it. Nor was it her last lesson of the same kind.

Her second friend was an old German violinist, who inhabited

two little rooms at the top of the big house, a tall, broad-

shouldered, stooping man, whose thick yellow hair and

moustache, plentifully mixed with grey, blue eyes, and fair

complexion, testified to his nationality, as did his queer,

uncouth accent, though he has spent at least two-thirds of his

life in Florence. He was an old friend of the American

painter's, and paid frequent visits to his studio; and it was

there he first met Madelon and her father. He did not much

affect M. Linders' company, but he took a fancy to the child,

as indeed most people did, and made her promise that she would

come and see him; and when she had once found her way, and

been welcomed to his little bare room, where an old piano, a

violin, and heaps of dusty folios of music, were the principal

furniture, a day seldom passed without her paying him a visit.

She would perch herself at his window, which commanded a wide

view over the city, with its countless roofs, and domes, and

towers, and beyond the encircling hills, with their scattered

villas, and slopes of terraced gardens, and pines, and olives,

all under the soft blue transparent sky; and with her eyes

fixed on this sunny view, Madelon would go off into some

dreamy fit, as she listened to the violinist, of whose playing

she never wearied. He was devoted to his art, though he had

never attained to any remarkable proficiency in it; and at any

hour of the day he might be heard scraping, and tuning, and

practising, for he belonged to the orchestra of one of the

theatres. It was quite a new sensation for Madelon to hear so

much music in private life, and she thought it all beautiful--

tuning and scraping and all.

"But that is all rubbish," the German would cry, after

spending an hour in going through some trashy modern Italian

music. "Now, my child, you shall hear something worth

listening to;" and with a sigh of relief he would turn to some

old piece by Mozart or Bach, some minuet of Haydn's, some

romance of Beethoven's, which he would play with no great

power of execution, indeed, but with a rare sweetness and

delicacy of touch and expression, and with an intense

absorption in the music, which communicated itself to even so

small a listener as Madelon.

It would have been hard to say which of the two had the more

enjoyment--she, as she sat motionless, her chin propped on her

two hands, her brown eyes gazing into space, and a hundred

dreamy fancies vaguely shaped by the music, flitting through

her brain; or he, as he bent over his violin, lovingly

exacting the sweet sounds, and his thoughts--who knows where? --

anywhere, one may be sure, rather than in the low-ceiled,

dusty garret, redolent of tobacco smoke, and not altogether

free from a suspicion of onions.

"There, my child," he would say at the end, "that is music--

that is art! What I was playing before was mere rubbish--trash,

unworthy of me and of my violin."

"And why do you play it?" asks Madelon, simply.

"Ah! why indeed?" said the violinist--"because one must live,

my little Fraülein; and since they will play nothing else at

the theatre, I must play it also, or I should be badly off."

"You are not rich, then?" said Madelon.

"Rich enough," he answered. "I gain enough to live upon, and I

ask no more."

"Why don't you make money like papa?" says Madelon; "then you

could play what you liked, you know. We are very rich

sometimes."

The old German screwed up his queer, kind, ugly face.

"It--it's not my way," he said drily. "As for money, I might

have had plenty by this time, if I had not run away from home

when I was a boy, because I preferred being a poor musician to

a rich merchant. Money is not the only nor the best thing in

the world, my little lady."

M. Linders apparently saw no danger to Madelon's principles in

these new friendships, or else, perhaps, he was bent on

carrying out his plan of letting her get used to things; at

any rate, he did not interfere with her spending as much time

as she liked with both painter and musician; and every day

through the winter she grew fonder of the society of the old

violinist. He was a lonely man, who lived with his music and

his books, cared little for company, and had few friends; but

he liked to see Madelon flitting about his dusky room,

carrying with her bright suggestions of the youth, and gaiety,

and hopefulness he had almost forgotten. He talked to her,

taught her songs, played to her as much as she liked, and

often gave her and her father orders for the theatre to which

he belonged, where, with delight, she would recognise his

familiar face as he nodded and smiled at her from the

orchestra. He instructed her, too, in music; made her learn

her notes, and practise on the jangling old piano, and even,

at her particular request, to scrape a little on the violin;

but she cared most for singing, and for hearing him play and

talk. She never felt shy or timid with him, and one day, at

the end of a long rhapsody about German music and German

composers, she asked him innocently enough--

"Who was Beethoven, and Mozart, and--and all those others you

talk about? I never heard of them before."

"Never before!" he cried, in a sort of comic amazement and

dismay. "Here is a little girl who has lived half her life in

Germany, who talks German, and yet never heard of Beethoven,

nor of Mozart, nor of--of all those others! Listen, then--they

were some of the greatest men that ever lived."

And, indeed, Madelon heard enough about them after that; for

delighted to have a small, patient listener, to whom he could

rhapsodize as much as he pleased in his native tongue, the

violinist henceforth lost no opportunity of delivering his

little lectures, and would harangue for an hour together, not

only about music and musicians, but about a thousand other

things--a queer, high-flown, rambling jumble, often enough,

which Madelon could not possibly follow nor understand, but to

which she nevertheless liked to listen. A safer teacher she

could hardly have had; she gained much positive information

from him, and when he got altogether beyond her, she remained

impressed with the conviction that he was speaking from the

large experiences of deep, mysterious wisdom and knowledge,

and sat listening with a reverential awe, as to some strange,

lofty strain, coming to her from some higher and nobler region

than she could hope to attain to as yet, and of which she

could in some sort catch the spirit, though she could not

enter into the idea. At the same time there was a certain

childlike vein running through all the old man's rambling

talk, which made it, after all, not unsuited to meet the

instinctive aspirations of a child's mind. With him love and

veneration for greatness and beauty, in every form, amounted

almost to a passion, which was still fresh and genuine, as in

the lad to whom the realization of the word _blasé_ seems the

one incomprehensible impossibility of life. In the simple

reverence with which he spoke of the great masters of his art,

Madelon might have recognized the same spirit as that which

animated the American; and as the artist had once uncovered at

the name of Raffaelle and Lionardo da Vinci, so did the

musician figuratively bow down at the shrines of Handel, or

Bach, or Beethoven. From both these men, so different in other

respects, the child began to learn the same lesson, which in

all her life before she had never even heard hinted at.

All this, however, almost overtaxed our little Madelon's

faculties, and it was not surprising that, as the winter wore

on, a change gradually came over her. In truth, both intellect

and imagination were being overstrained by the constant

succession of new images, new ideas, new thoughts, that

presented themselves to her. She by no means grew accustomed

to churches--not in the sense, at any rate, which her father

had hoped would be the result of his new system. It was not

possible that she should, while so much remained that was

mysterious and unexplained; she only wearied her small brain

with the effort to find the explanation for all these new

perplexities, which she felt must exist somewhere, though she

could not find it; add to this, these long conversations, this

music, with its strange, vague suggestions, and even the

thousand novelties of the picturesque Italian life around her,

not one of which was lost on her impressionable little mind,

and we need not wonder that she began to suffer from an

excitement that gathered in strength from day to day. She grew

thin, morbid, nervous, ate almost nothing, and lost her usual

vivacity, sitting absorbed in dreamy fits, from which it was

difficult to arouse her, and which were very different from

the quiet, happy silence in which she used to remain contented

by her father's side for hours. All night she was haunted with

what she had seen by day in picture-galleries and churches.

The heavenly creations of Fra Angelico or Sandro Botticelli,

of Ghirlandaio or Raffaelle, over which she had mused and

pondered, re-produced themselves in dreams, with the intensity

and reality of actual visions, and with accessories borrowed

from all that, in her new life, had impressed itself most

vividly on her imagination. Once more she would stand in the

vast church, the censers swinging, the organ pealing overhead,

round her a great throng of beatified adoring saints, with

golden glories, with palms, and tall white lilies, and many-

coloured garments; or pillars and arches would melt away, and

she would find herself wandering through flower-enamelled

grass, in fair rose-gardens of Paradise; or radiant forms

would come gliding towards her through dark-blue skies; or the

heavens themselves would seem to open, and reveal a blaze of

glory, where, round a blue-robed, star-crowned Madonna, choirs

of rapturous angels repeated the divine melodies she had heard

faintly echoed in the violinist's dim little room. All day

long these dreams clung to her, oppressing her with their

strange unreal semblance of reality, associating themselves

with every glowing sunset, with every starry sky, till the

pictures themselves that had suggested them looked pale by

comparison.

She was, in fact, going through a mental crisis, such as, in

other circumstances, and under fostering influences, has

produced more than one small ecstatic enthusiast; the infant

shining light of some Methodist conventicle; the saintly child

visionary of some Catholic convent. But Madelon had no one to

foster, nor to interpret for her these feverish visions, so

inexplicable to herself, poor child! To the good-natured,

careless, jovial American, she would not have even hinted at

them for worlds, and not less carefully did she shun appealing

to her father for sympathy. That contemptuous "_vraiment_" dwelt

in her memory, not as a matter of resentment, but as something

to be avoided henceforth at the cost of any amount of self-

repression. She would sit leaning her languid little head on

his shoulder; but when he anxiously asked her what ailed her,

she could only reply, "I don't know, papa." And indeed she did

not know; nor even if she had, could she have found the words

with which to have explained it to him. It was, after all, the

old German who won her confidence at last. There was, as we

have said, something simple, genuine, homely about the old

man; a reminiscence, perhaps, of his homely Fatherland still

clinging about him, after more than forty years of voluntary

exile, which Madelon could well appreciate, though she could

not have defined it; for a child judges more by instinct than

reflection, and it was through no long process of reasoning

that she had arrived at the certainty that she would be met

here by neither contempt nor indifference. Moreover, his

generally lofty and slightly incomprehensible style of

conversation, and the endless stores of learning with which

she had innocently accredited him, had surrounded him with

that vague halo of wisdom and goodness, so dear to the hearts

of children of larger as of smaller growth, and which they are

so eager to recognize, that they do not always distinguish

between the false and the true. From the very beginning of

their acquaintance, it had occurred to Madelon that she might

be able to gain some information on that subject, which her

father had pronounced to be above her comprehension as yet;

but which, on reflection, and encouraged by a Nanette's

example, she felt quite sure she could understand if it were

only explained to her. Twenty times had that still unanswered

question trembled on her lips, but a shy timidity, not so much

of her old friend as of the subject itself, which had become

invested in her mind with a kind of awful mystery, to which a

hundred circumstances daily contributed, checked her at the

moment of utterance.

One evening, however, she was sitting as usual at the window

in the old man's room. The sun had set, the short twilight was

drawing to a close, church bells were ringing, down in the

city yellow lights were gleaming in windows here and there,

above, the great sky rounded upward from a faint glow on the

horizon through imperceptible gradations of tint, to pure

depths of transparent blue overhead, where stars were

beginning to flash and tremble; within, in the gloom, the

musician sat playing a sacred melody of Spohr's, and as

Madelon listened, some subtle affinity between this hour and

the first one she had spent in the church touched her, and her

eyes filled with sudden tears of painful ecstasy. As the old

German ceased, she went up to him with an impulse that

admitted of no hesitation, and, as well as she could, told him

all that was in her mind--her dreams, her strange weird

fancies, all that for the last few months had been haunting

and oppressing her with its weight of mystery. "Papa said I

could not understand," she said in conclusion, "but I think I

could. Will you not explain it to me? Can you not tell me what

it all means, and who--who is God?"

The German had heard in silence till then, but at this last

question he started from his listening attitude.

"_Was--was--_" he stammered, and suddenly rising--"_Ach, mein Gott!_"

he cried, with the familiar ejaculation, "to ask me!--to ask

me!"

He walked twice up and down the room, as stirred by some

hidden emotion, his head bowed, his hands behind his back,

murmuring to himself, and then stopped where Madelon was

standing by the window. She looked up, half trembling, into

the rugged face bent over her. He was her priest for the

moment, standing as it were between earth and heaven--her

confessor, to whom she had revealed the poor little secrets of

her heart; and she waited with a sort of awe for his answer.

"My child," he said at length, looking down sadly enough into

her eager, inquiring eyes, "when I was no older than thou art,

I had a pious, gentle mother, at whose knee night and morning

I said my prayers--and believed. If she were alive now, I would

say, 'Go to her, and she will tell thee of all these things'--

but do not speak of them to me. Old Karl Wendler is neither

good, nor wise, nor believing enough to instruct thee, an

innocent child."

He made this little speech very gently and solemnly; then

turned away abruptly, took up his hat, and left the room

without another word. Madelon stood still for a minute

baffled, repulsed, with a sort of bruised, sore feeling at her

heart, and yet with a new sense of wondering pity, roused by

something in his words and manner; then she too left the room,

and though the darkness crept softly downstairs.

So ended this little episode with the violinist. Not that she

did not visit and sit with him as much as before; the very

next day, when she returned, rather shyly, upstairs, she found

him sitting in the old place, with the old nod and smile to

welcome her, but somehow he managed to put things on a

different footing--he spared her his long metaphysical

discourses, and talked to her more as the child that she was,

laughing, joking, and telling her queer hobgoblin and fairy

stories, some of which she knew before indeed, but which he

related with a quaint simplicity and naïveté, which gave them

a fresh charm for her; and under this new aspect of things,

she brightened up, began to lose her fits of dreaminess, to

chatter as in old times, and cheered many an hour of the

musician's solitary life. The American artist, too, left

Florence about this time for a visit to Rome; and during his

absence the _atelier_ was closed, and wandering through churches

and picture galleries were exchanged for long excursions into

the country with her father; by degrees dreams, fancies,

visions floated away, and Madelon became herself again.

She had gone through a phase, and one not altogether natural

to her, and which readily passed away with the abnormal

conditions that had occasioned it. She was by no means one of

those dreamy, thoughtful, often melancholy children who

startle us by the precocious grasp of their intellect, by

their intuitive perception of truths which we had deemed far

above their comprehension. Madelon's precocity was of quite

another order. In her quick, impulsive, energetic little mind

there was much that was sensitive and excitable, little that

was morbid or unhealthy. One might see that, with her, action

would always willingly take the place of reflection; that her

impulses would have the strength of inspirations; that she

would be more ready to receive impressions than to reason upon

them. Meditation, comparison, introspection, were wholly

foreign to this little, eager, impetuous nature, however they

might be forced upon it in the course of years and events; and

with her keen sense of enjoyment in all glad outward

influences, one might have feared that the realities of life

present to her would too readily preclude any contemplation of

its hidden possibilities, but for a lively, susceptible

imagination, which would surely intervene to prevent any such

tendency being carried out to its too prosaic end. It was

through appeals to her imagination and affection, rather than

to her reason and intellect, that Madeleine could be

influenced; and whatever large sympathies with humanity she

might acquire through life, whatever aspirations after a high

and noble ideal, whatever gleams of inspiration from the great

beyond that lies below the widest, as well as the narrowest

horizon, might visit her--all these would come to her, we may

fancy, through the exercise of pure instincts and a sensitive

imagination, rather than through the power of logical

deduction from given causes.

From our small, ten-year-old Madelon, however, all this still

lay hidden; for the present, the outward pressure, which had

weighed too heavily on her little mind and brain, removed, she

returned with a glad reaction to her old habits of thought and

speech. Not entirely indeed; the education she had received,

remained and worked; the "obstinate questionings," an answer

to which she had twice vainly sought, were unforgotten, and

still awaited their reply. This little Madelon, to whom the

golden gates had been opened, though ever so slightly--to whom

the divine, lying all about her and within her, had been

revealed, though ever so dimly--could never be quite the same

as the little Madelon who, careless and unthinking, had

strayed into the great church that summer morning six months

ago; but the child herself was as yet hardly conscious of

this, and neither, we may be sure, was M. Linders, as with

renewed cheerfulness, and spirits, and chatter, she danced

along by his side under the new budding trees, under the fair

blue skies.

It was soon after this, when the delicious promise of an early

spring was brightening the streets and gardens of Florence,

filling them with sunshine and flowers, that another shadow

fell upon the brightness of Madelon's life, and one so dark

and real, as to make all others seem faint and illusory by

comparison. Her father had a serious illness. He had not been

well all the winter; and one day, Madelon, coming down from

the violinist's room, had been frightened almost out of her

small wits at finding him lying back unconscious in a chair in

their little _salon_. She called the old woman who acted as

their servant to her assistance, and between them they had

soon succeeded in restoring him to consciousness, when he had

made light of it, saying it was merely a fit of giddiness,

which would have passed off. He had refused to be alarmed, or

to send for a doctor, even after a second and third attack of

the same kind; but then a fever, which in the mild spring

weather was lurking about, lying in wait of victims, seized

him, and laid him fairly prostrate.

His illness never took a really dangerous turn, but it kept

him weak and helpless for some weary weeks, during which

Madelon learnt to be a most efficient little nurse, taking

turns with the old servant and with the violinist, who

willingly came down from his upper regions to do all he could

to help his little favourite. In some respects she, perhaps,

made the best nurse of all, with her small skilful fingers,

and entire devotion to her father. She had a curious courage,

too, for such an inexperienced child, and the sense of an

emergency was quite sufficient to make her conquer the

horrible pang it gave her loving little heart to see her

father lying racked with pain, unconscious, and sometimes

delirious. She never failed to be ready when wanted; the

doctor complimented her, and said jokingly that the little

Signorina would make a capital doctor's assistant. Her German

friend nodded approval, and, best of all, it was always to his

Madelon that M. Linders turned in his most weary moments--from

her that he liked to receive drinks and medicine; and she it

was who, as he declared, arranged his pillows and coverings

more comfortably than anyone else. In delirium he asked for

her continually; his eyes sought her when she was not in the

room, and lighted up when she came with her little noiseless

step to his bedside. The old German, who had had a strong

dislike to, and prejudice against this man, took almost a

liking to him, as he noted the great love existing between him

and his little daughter.

The American did not return till M. Linders was nearly well

again, and thinking of departure. Madelon was in despair at

the idea of leaving Florence; it had been more like home to

her than any place she had yet known, and it almost broke her

heart to think of parting with her old German friend; but M.

Linders was impatient to be gone. He wanted change of air, he

said, after his illness; but, indeed, had other reasons which

he proclaimed less openly, but which were far more imperative,

and made him anxious to pay an earlier visit to Germany this

year than was usual with him. Certain speculations, on the

success of which he had counted, had failed, so that a grand

_coup_ at Homburg or Baden seemed no less necessary than

desirable to set him straight again with the world, and he

accordingly fixed on a day towards the end of April for their

departure.

The American made a festive little supper the evening before

in his _atelier_, but it was generally felt to be a melancholy

failure, for not even the artist's rather forced gaiety, nor

M. Linders' real indifference, could enliven it. As for the

old German, he sat there, saying little, eating less, and

smoking a great deal; and Madelon at his side was speechless,

only rousing herself later in the evening to coax him into

playing once more all her favourite tunes. Everyone, except,

perhaps, M. Linders, felt more or less sorry at the breaking

up of a pleasant little society which had lasted for some

months, and the violinist almost felt as if he were being

separated from his own child. Madelon wished him good-bye that

night, but she ran upstairs very early the next morning to see

him once more before starting.

The old man was greatly moved; he was standing looking sadly

out of the window when she came in, and when he saw her in her

little travelling cloak, the tears began to run down his

rugged old cheeks.

"God bless thee, my little one!" he said. "I shall miss thee

sorely--but thou wilt not forget me?"

"Never, never!" cries Madelon, with a little sob, and

squeezing the kind hands that held hers so tightly.

"And if I should never see thee again," said the German, in

broken accents, "if--if--remember, I----" He hesitated and

stammered, and M. Linders' voice was heard calling Madelon.

"I must go," she said, "papa is calling me; but I will never

forget you--never; ah! you have been so good, so kind to me.

See here," she said, unclosing one of her hands which she had

kept tightly shut, and showing the little green and gold fish

Horace Graham had given her years before, "I promised never to

part with this, but I have nothing else--and--and I love you so

much--will you have it?"

"No, no," said the old man, smiling and shaking his head,

"keep thy promise, and thy treasure, my child; I do not

require that to remind me of thee. Farewell!"

He put her gently out of the door as her father's step was

heard coming upstairs, and closed it after her. She never did

see him again, for he died in less than two years after their

parting.

M. Linders went to Homburg, to Baden, to Wiesbaden, but he was

no longer the man he had been before his illness; he won

largely, indeed, at times, but he lost as largely at others,

playing with a sort of reckless, feverish impatience, instead

of with the steady coolness that had distinguished him

formerly. Old acquaintance who met him said that M. Linders

was a broken man, and that his best days were over: men who

had been accustomed to bet on his success, shrugged their

shoulders, and sought for some steadier and luckier player to

back; he himself, impatient of ill-luck, and of continual

defeat in the scenes of his former triumphs, grew restless and

irritable, wandered from place to place in search of better

fortune and better health, and at length, at the end of a

fortnight's stay at Wiesbaden, after winning a large sum at

_rouge-et-noir_, and losing half of it the next day, announced

abruptly that he was tired of Germany, and should set off at

once for Paris. Madelon had noticed the alteration in her

father less than anyone else perhaps; she was used to changes

of fortune, and whatever he might feel he never showed it in

his manner to her; outwardly, at least, this summer had

appeared to her very similar to any preceding one, and she was

too much accustomed to M. Linders' sudden moves, to find

anything unusual in this one, although, dictated as it was by

a caprice of weariness and disgust, it took them away from the

Germany tables just at the height of the season. Once more,

then, the two set out together, and towards the middle of

August found themselves established in their old quarters in

the Paris Hotel, where Madame Linders had died, and where

Madame Lavaux still reigned head of the establishment.

PART II.

Chapter I.

After five Years.

One evening, about three weeks after their arrival in Paris,

Madelon was standing at a window at the end of the long

corridor into which M. Linders' apartment opened; the moon was

shining brightly, and she had a book in her hand, which she

was reading by its clear light, stopping, however, every

minute to gaze down into the front courtyard of the hotel,

which lay beneath the window, quiet, almost deserted after the

bustle of the day, and full of white moonlight and black

shadows. Her father was out, and she was watching for his

return, though it was now long past eleven o'clock.

There was nothing unusual on her part in this late vigil, for

she was quite accustomed to sit up for her father, when he

spent his evenings away from home; but there must have been

something strange and forlorn-looking in the little figure

standing there all alone at such an hour, for a gentleman, who

had come in late from the theatre, paused as he was turning

the key of the door before entering his room, looked at her

once or twice, and, after a moment's hesitation, walked up to

the window. Madelon did not notice him till he was close

behind her, and then turned round with a little start,

dropping her book.

"I did not think it was you--" she began; then seeing a

stranger, stopped short in the middle of her speech.

"I am afraid I have startled you," said the gentleman in

English-French, but with a pleasant voice and manner, "and

disappointed you too."

"I beg your pardon, Monsieur," she answered, "I thought it was

papa; I have been looking for him so long," and she turned

round to the window again.

It was five years since Horace Graham and Madeleine had spent

an hour together in the courtyard at Chaudfontaine, so that it

was not surprising that they did not at once recognise each

other at this second unforeseen meeting; the young man, as

well as the child, had then been of an age to which five years

cannot be added without bringing with them most appreciable

changes. For Graham, these years had been precisely that

transition period in which a lad separates himself from the

aggregate mass of youth, and stands forth in the world as a

man of his own right, according to that which is in him. This

tall, thin, brown young army doctor, who has passed brilliant

examinations, who is already beginning to be known favourably

in the profession, whose name has appeared at the end of more

than one approved article in scientific Reviews; who has

travelled, seen something of Italy, Switzerland, Belgium; who

for five years has been studying, thinking, living through

youthful experiences and failures, and out-living some

youthful illusions, cannot fail, one may be sure, to be a

different personage, in many respects, from the fresh-hearted

medical student who had sauntered away an idle Sunday amongst

the woods and valleys round Chaudfontaine, and had looked with

curious, half wondering eyes at the new little world disclosed

to him at the hotel. As for our little Madelon, the small,

round, pinafored child was hardly recognisable in this slim

little girl, in white frock, with brown hair that hung in

short wayward tangling waves, instead of curling in soft

ringlets all over her head; and yet Graham, who rarely forgot

a face, was haunted by a vague remembrance of her eyes, with

the peculiar look, half-startled, half-confiding, with which

they met the first glance of strangers. Madelon's brown eyes

were the greatest charm of a face which was hardly pretty yet,

though it had the promise of beauty in after years; to liken

them to those of some dumb, soft, dark-eyed animal is to use a

trite comparison; and yet there is, perhaps, no other that so

well describes eyes such as these, which seem charged with a

meaning beyond that which their owner is able to express in

words, or is, perhaps, even conscious of. When seen in

children, they seem to contain a whole prophecy of their

future lives, and in Madelon they had probably a large share

in the powers of attraction which she undoubtedly possessed;

few could resist their mute appeal, which, child as she was,

went beyond her own thought, and touched deeper sympathies

than any she could yet have known.

There was a moment's silence after Madelon had spoken, and

then she once more turned from the window with a disappointed

air.

"Pardon, Monsieur," she said again, "but can you tell me what

time it is? Is it past eleven?"

"It is more than half-past," said Graham, looking at his

watch. "Have you been waiting here long?"

"Since ten o'clock," said Madelon, "papa said he would be in

by ten. I cannot think where he can be."

"He has probably found something to detain him," suggested

Graham.

"No," answered Madelon, rejecting this obvious proposition;

"for he had an appointment here; there is some one waiting for

him now."

"Then he has perhaps come in without your knowing it?"

"I do not think so," said Madelon, "he would have called me;

and besides, I should have seen him cross the courtyard. I saw

you come in just now, Monsieur."

Nevertheless she left her station by the window, and moved

slowly along the passage to their apartment; it was just

opposite Graham's, and as she went in, leaving the door open,

Horace, who had followed her without any very definite

purpose, looked in. It was a tolerably large room, with a door

to the left opening into a smaller apartment, Utrecht velvet

chairs and sofa, a mantelpiece also covered with velvet, on

which stood a clock, a tall looking-glass, and two lighted wax

candles; a table in the middle with some packs of cards, and a

liqueur bottle and glasses, and a bed on one side opposite the

fireplace. The window looked on to a side street, noisy with

the incessant rattling of vehicles, and so narrow that the

numerous lighted interiors of the houses opposite were visible

to the most casual observer. A smell of smoking pervaded the

room, explained by the presence of a young man, who held a

cigar in one hand, whilst he leaned half out of the window,

over the low iron balcony in front, shouting to some one in

the street below. He looked round as Madelon came in, and

slowly drew himself back into the room, exhibiting a lean,

yellow face, surrounded with dishevelled hair, and ornamented

by black unkempt beard and moustache.

"_Monsieur votre père_ does not arrive apparently,

Mademoiselle," he said.

"I have not seen him come in, Monsieur," answered Madelon; "I

thought he was perhaps here."

"Not at all, I have seen nothing of him this evening. But this

is perhaps a trick that Monsieur le Papa is playing me; he

fears to give me his little revenge of which he spoke, and

wishes to keep out of my way. What do you say to that,

Mademoiselle?"

"I am quite sure it is not so," answered Madelon, with a

little defiant air. "I heard papa say it was quite by chance

he had lost all that money to you, for you did not understand

the first principles of the game."

"Ah! he said that? But it is lucky for us other poor devils

that we have these chances sometimes! You will at least admit

that, Mademoiselle?"

"Papa plays better than anyone," says Madelon, retreating from

argument to the safer ground of assertion, and still standing

in the middle of the room in her defiant attitude, with her

hands clasped behind her.

"Without a doubt, Mademoiselle; but then, as he says, we also

have our chances. Well, I cannot wait for mine this evening,

for it is nearly midnight, and I have another appointment.

These gentlemen will wonder what has become of me.

Mademoiselle, I have the honour to wish you good evening."

He made a profound bow, and left the room.

Madelon gave a great sigh, and then came out into the passage

again where Horace was standing. He had been a somewhat

bewildered spectator of this queer little interview, but the

child evidently saw nothing out of the way in it, for she made

no remark upon it, and only said rather piteously,

"I cannot imagine where papa can be; I do wish he would come

back."

"Does he often stay out so late as this?" asked Graham.

"Oh! yes, often, but not when he says he is coming in early,

or when he is expecting anyone."

"And do you know where he is gone?"

"No, not at all. He said he was going to dine with some

gentlemen, but I don't know where! Oh! do you think anything--

anything can have happened?" cried Madelon, her hidden anxiety

suddenly finding utterance.

"Indeed I do not," answered Graham, in his kindest voice. "His

friends have persuaded him to stay late, I have no doubt; you

must not be so uneasy--these things often happen, you know. Let

us go and look out of the window again; perhaps we shall see

him just coming in."

They went to the end of the corridor accordingly; but no one

was to be seen, except the man who had just left M. Linders'

apartment walking briskly across the moonlight space below,

the great doors of the _porte-cochère_ closing after him with a

clang that resounded through the silent courtyard. Graham had

nothing further to say in the way of consolation; he could

think of no more possible contingencies to suggest, and,

indeed, it was useless to go on reasoning concerning perfectly

unknown conditions. Madelon, however, seemed a little

reassured by his confident tone, and he changed the subject by

asking her whether the gentleman who had just left was a

friend of hers.

"Who? Monsieur Legros?" Madelon answered. "No, I don't know

him much, and I do not like him at all; he comes sometimes to

play with papa."

"To play with him?"

"Yes, at cards, you know--at _écarté_, or _piquet_, or one of those

games."

"And it was with him that your father had an appointment?"

"Yes," said Madelon; "he came last night, and papa told him to

be here again this evening at ten, and that is why I cannot

think why he does not come."

She turned again disconsolately to the window, and there was

another pause. Madelon relapsed into the silence habitual to

her with strangers, and Graham hardly knew how to continue the

conversation; yet he was unwilling to leave the child alone

with her anxiety at that late hour: and besides, he was

haunted by vague, floating memories that refused to shape

themselves definitely. Some time--somewhere--he had heard or

seen, or dreamt of some one--he could not catch the connecting

link which would serve to unite some remote, foregone

experience with his present sensations.

He moved a little away from the window, and in so doing his

foot struck against the book which Madelon had dropped on

first seeing him, and he stooped to pick it up. It was a

German story-book, full of bright coloured pictures; so he saw

as he opened it and turned over the leaves, scarcely thinking

of what he did, when his eye was suddenly arrested by the

inscription on the fly-leaf. The book had been given to

Madelon only the year before by a German lady she had met at

Chaudfontaine, and there was her name, "Madeleine Linders,"

that of the donor, the date, and below, "Hôtel des Bains,

Chaudfontaine." It was a revelation to Horace. Of course he

understood it all now. Here was the clue to his confused

recollections, to the strange little scene he had just

witnessed. Another moonlit courtyard came to his remembrance,

a gleaming, rushing river, a background of shadowy hills, and

a little coy, wilful, chattering girl, with curly hair and

great brown eyes--those very eyes that had been perplexing him

not ten minutes ago.

"I think you and I have met before," he said to Madelon,

smiling; "but I daresay you don't remember much about it,

though I recollect you very well now."

"We have met before?" said Madelon. "Pardon, Monsieur, but I

do not very well recall it."

"At Chaudfontaine, five years ago, when you were quite a

little girl. You are Madeleine Linders, are you not?"

"Yes, I am Madeleine Linders," she answered. "I have often

been at Chaudfontaine; did you stay at the hotel there?"

"Only for one night," said Graham; "but you and I had a long

talk together in the courtyard that evening. Let me see, how

can I recall it to you? Ah! there was a little green and gold

fish----"

"Was that you?" cried Madelon, her face suddenly brightening

with a flush of intelligence and pleasure. "I have it still,

that little fish. Ah! how glad I am now that I did not give it

away! That gentleman was so kind to me, I shall never forget

him. But it was you!" she added, with a sudden recognition of

Graham's identity.

"It was indeed," he said laughing. "So you have thought of me

sometimes since then? But I am afraid you would not have

remembered me if I had not told you who I was."

"I was such a little girl then," said Madelon colouring. "Five

years ago--why I was not six years old; but I remember you very

well now," she added, smiling up at him. "I have often thought

of you, Monsieur, and I am so glad to see you again."

She said it with a little naïve air of frankness and sincerity

which was very engaging, giving him her hand as she spoke.

"I am glad you have not quite forgotten me," said Graham,

sitting down by her on the window seat; "but indeed you have

grown so much, I am not sure I should have recollected you, if

I had not seen your name here. What have you been doing ever

since? Have you ever been to Chaudfontaine again?"

"Oh, very often," said Madelon. "We go there almost every year

for a little while--not this year though, for we were at

Wiesbaden till three weeks ago, and then papa had to come to

Paris at once."

"And do you still go about everywhere with your papa, or do

you go to school sometimes?"

"To school? oh no, never," said Madelon, not without some

wonder at the idea. "Papa would not send me to school. I

should not like it at all, and neither would he. I know he

would not get on at all well without me, and I love travelling

about with him. Last winter we were in Italy."

"And you never come to England?"

"No, never. I asked papa once if he would not go there, and he

said no, that we should not like it at all, it was so cold and

_triste_ there, one never amused one's-self."

"But I thought you had some relations there," said Graham.

"Surely I saw an uncle with you who was English?"

"Oh yes, Uncle Charles; but he never went to England either,

and he died a long time ago. I don't know of any other

relations."

"So you never talk English now, I suppose? Do you remember

telling me to speak English, because I spoke French so

funnily?"

"No," said Madelon, colouring and laughing. "How is it

possible I can have been so rude, Monsieur? I think you speak

it very well. But I have not forgotten my English, for I have

some books, and often we meet English or American gentlemen,

so that I still talk it sometimes."

"And German too," said Horace, looking at her book.

"Yes, and Italian; I learnt that last winter at Florence. We

meet a great many different people, you know, so I don't

forget."

"And you are always travelling about?"

"Yes, always; I should not like to live in one place, I think,

and papa would not like it either, he says. Do you remember

papa, Monsieur?"

"Very well," said Graham; and indeed he recalled perfectly the

little scene in the salle-à-manger of the Chaudfontaine hotel--

the long dimly lighted room, the two men playing at cards, and

the little child nestling close up to the fair one whom she

called papa. "Yes, I remember him very well," he added, after

a moment's pause.

"How strange that you should see us here again!" said Madelon.

"Did you know we were staying in the hotel, Monsieur?"

"Not at all," answered Horace, smiling. "I only arrived

yesterday, and had no notion that I should find an old

acquaintance to welcome me."

"How fortunate that I was waiting here, and that you saw my

name in that book," said Madelon, evidently looking on the

whole as a great event, brought about by a more remarkable

combination of circumstances than everyday life as a rule

afforded. "Without that you would not have known who I was,

perhaps? Papa will be very glad to see you again. Ah, how I

wish he would come!" she added, all her anxieties suddenly

revived.

"Do you always sit up for him when he is so late?" said

Graham. "Surely it would be wiser for you to go to bed."

"That is just what I said to Mademoiselle an hour ago," said a

kind, cheery voice behind them, belonging to Madame Lavaux,

the mistress of the hotel. "Of what use, I say, is it for her

to sit up waiting for her papa, who will not come any the

sooner for that."

"Ah! Madame, I must wait," said Madelon. "Papa will come

soon."

"But, _ma chère petite_--" began Madame.

"I must wait," repeated Madelon, piteously; "I always sit up

for him."

Graham thought he could not do better than leave her in the

hands of the landlady, and with a friendly good-night, and a

promise to come and see her the next day, he went back to his

own room. In a few minutes, he heard Madame pass along the

corridor and go upstairs to bed; but, though tired enough

himself after a day of Paris sight-seeing, he could not make

up his mind to do the same, when, on opening his door, he saw

Madelon standing where he had left her. He could not get rid

of the thought of this lonely little watcher at the end of the

passage, and taking up a book he began to read. From time to

time he looked out, but there was no change in the posture of

affairs; through the half-open door opposite he could see the

lights burning in the still empty room, and the small figure

remained motionless at the moonlit window. All sounds of life

and movement were hushed in the hotel, all the clocks had long

since struck midnight, and he was considering whether he

should not go and speak to Madelon again, when he heard a

faint cry, and then a rush of light feet along the passage and

down the staircase.

"So he has come at last," thought Graham, laying down his book

with a sense of relief, not sorry to have his self-imposed

vigil brought to an end. He still sat listening, however; his

door was ajar, and he thought he should hear the father and

child come up together. There was a moment's silence as the

sound of the footsteps died away, and then succeeded a quick

opening and shutting of doors, the tread of hasty feet, a

confusion of many voices speaking at once, a sudden clamour

and stir breaking in on the stillness, and then suddenly

subdued and hushed, as if to suit the prevailing quiet of the

sleeping house.

"Something must have happened," thought Graham. "That poor

child!--perhaps her father has, after all, met with some

accident!" He left his room and ran quickly downstairs. The

confused murmur of voices grew louder as he approached the

hall, and on turning the last angle of the staircase, he at

once perceived the cause of the disturbance.

A little group was collected in the middle of the hall, the

night porter, one or two of the servants of the hotel, and

some men in blouses, all gathered round a tall prostrate man,

half lying on a bench placed under the centre lamp, half

supported by two men, who had apparently just carried him in.

He was quite insensible, his head had fallen forward on his

breast, and was bound with a handkerchief that had been tied

round to staunch the blood from a wound in his forehead; his

neckcloth was unfastened and his coat thrown back to give him

more air. The little crowd was increasing every moment, as the

news spread through the house; the _porte-cochère_ stood wide

open, and outside in the street a _fiacre_ could be seen,

standing in the moonlight.

"A doctor must be fetched at once," someone was saying, just

as Horace came up and recognized, not without difficulty, in

the pale disfigured form before him, the handsome fair-haired

M. Linders he had met at Chaudfontaine five years before.

"I am a doctor," he said, coming forward. "Perhaps I can be of

some use here."

No one seemed to notice him at first--a lad had already started

in quest of a surgeon, and jumping into the empty _fiacre_ that

had brought the injured man to the hotel, was driving off; but

Madelon turned round at the sound of Graham's voice, and

looked up in his face with a new expression of hope in her

eyes, instead of the blank, bewildered despair with which she

had been gazing at her father and the strange faces around. To

the poor child it seemed as if she had lived through an

unknown space of terror and misery during the few minutes that

had elapsed since from the passage window she had seen the

_fiacre_ stop, and, with the presentiment of evil which had been

haunting her during these last hours of suspense, intensified

to conviction, had flown downstairs only to meet her father's

insensible form as he was carried in. She was kneeling now by

his side, and was chafing one of his cold hands between her

poor little trembling fingers; but when she saw Graham

standing at the edge of the circle she got up, and went to

him.

"Will you come to papa?" she said, taking him by both hands

and drawing him forward.

"Don't be frightened," said Horace, in his kind, cheerful

voice, trying to encourage her, for her face and lips were

colourless, and she was trembling as with a sudden chill. He

put one arm round her, and came forward to look at M. Linders.

"Allow me," he said; and this time his voice commanded

attention, and imposed a moment's silence on the confusion of

tongues. "I am a doctor, and can perhaps be of some use; but I

must beg of you not to press round in this way. Can anyone

tell me what has happened?" he added, as he bent over M.

Linders.

"It was an accident, Monsieur," said a man of the working-

class, standing by, "this poor gentleman must have had some

kind of fit, I think. I was crossing the Boulevards with him

about ten o'clock; there were a good many carriages about, but

we were going quietly enough, when suddenly I saw him stop,

put his hand to his head, and fall down in the road. I had to

run just then to get safely across myself, and when I reached

the other side, I saw a great confusion, and heard that a

carriage had driven straight over him."

There was a moment's pause, and Madelon said in a tremulous

whisper, "Papa used to have vertiges last winter, but he got

quite well again."

"To be sure," said Graham; "and so we must hope he will now.

That was more than two hours ago," he said, turning to the

man--"what have you been doing ever since?"

"We carried him into the nearest _café_, Monsieur, and some

proposed taking him to a hospital, but after a time we found a

letter in his pocket addressed to this hotel, and we thought

it best to bring him here, as he might have friends; so we got

a _fiacre_. But it was a long way off, and we were obliged to

come very slowly."

"A hospital would perhaps have been the better plan," said

Graham; "or you should have found a doctor before moving him.

However, now he must be carried upstairs without further

delay. My poor child," he said, turning to Madelon, "you can

do no good here--you had better go with Madame, who will take

care of you; will you not, Madame?" he added, turning to the

landlady, who, roused from her bed, had just appeared, after a

hasty toilette.

"Yes, yes, she can come with me," said Madame Lavaux, who was

not in the best of tempers at the disturbance; "but I beg of

you not to make more noise than you can help, Messieurs, or I

shall have the whole house disturbed, and half the people

leaving to-morrow."

The sad little procession moved quietly enough up the stairs,

and along the corridor to M. Linders' room. Graham had gone on

in front, but Madame Lavaux had held back Madelon when she

would have pressed forward by the side of the men who were

carrying her father, and she had yielded at first in sheer

bewilderment. She had passed through more than one phase of

emotion in the course of the last ten minutes, poor child! The

first overwhelming shock and terror had passed away, when

Graham's reassuring voice and manner had convinced her that

her father was not dead; but she had still felt too stunned

and confused to do more than obey passively, as she watched

him carefully raised, and slowly carried from the hall. By the

time they reached the top of the staircase, however, her

natural energy began to reassert itself; and, as she saw him

disappear within the bedroom, her impatient eagerness to be at

his side again, could not be restrained. His recent illness

was still too fresh a memory for the mere sight of his present

suffering and insensibility to have any of the terrors of

novelty, after the first shock was over, and all her former

experiences went to prove that his first words on recovering

consciousness would be to ask for her. Her one idea was that

she must go at once and nurse him; she had not heeded, nor,

perhaps, even heard Graham's last words, and she was about to

follow the men into the bedroom, when Madame Lavaux interposed

to prevent her.

"Run upstairs to my room, _petite_," she said; "you will be out

of the way there, and I will come to you presently."

"No," said Madelon, refusing point-blank, "I am going with

papa."

"But it is not possible, my child; you will only be in the

way. You heard what M. le Docteur said?"

"I _will_ go to papa!" cries Madelon, trembling with agitation

and excitement; "he will want me, I know he will, I am never

in his way! You have no right to prevent my going to him,

Madame! Let me pass, I say," for Madame Lavaux was standing

between her and the door of the room into which M. Linders had

been carried.

"_Allons donc_, we must be reasonable," says Madame. "Your papa

does not want you now, and little girls should do as they are

told. If you had gone to bed an hour ago, as I advised, you

would have known nothing about all this till to-morrow. Eh,

these children! there is no doing anything with them; and

these men," she continued, with a sigh, "the noise they make

with their great boots! and precisely Madame la Comtesse, au

_premier_, had an _attaque des nerfs_ this evening, and said the

house was as noisy as a barrack--but these things always happen

at unfortunate moments!"

No one answered this little speech, which, in fact, was

addressed to no one in particular. It was, perhaps, not

altogether Madame Lavaux' fault that through long habit her

instincts as the proprietor of a large hotel had ended by

predominating so far over her instincts as a woman as always

to come to hand first. The nice adjustment between the claims

of conscience and the claims of self-interest, between the

demands of her bills and the demands of never-satisfied,

exacting travellers, alone involved a daily recurring

struggle, in which the softer emotions would have been

altogether out of place, we may suppose. In the present

instance she considered it a hard case that her house should

be turned topsy-turvy at such an untimely hour, and its

general propriety endangered thereby; and Madelon's grief,

which at another time would have excited her compassion, had

for the moment taken the unexpected form of determined

opposition, and could only be looked upon as another element

of disturbance. Madelon herself, however, who could hardly be

expected to regard her father's accident with a view to those

wider issues that naturally presented themselves to Madame

Lavaux, simply felt that she was being cruelly ill-used. She

had not attended to a word of this last speech, but

nevertheless she had detected the want of sympathy, and it by

no means increased her desire to accede to Madame's wishes.

"I _will_ go to papa," she repeated, the sense of antagonism

that had come uppermost gaining strength and vehemence from

the consciousness of the underlying grief and sore trouble

that had aroused it, "or I will stay here if you will not let

me pass; rather than go away I will stand here all night."

Graham had heard nothing of this little altercation, but now

coming out of the bed-room to speak to Madame Lavaux, he found

a most determined little Madelon standing with her hands

clasped behind her, and her back set firmly against the wall,

absolutely refusing to retreat.

She sprang forward, however, as soon as she saw him.

"I may go to papa now, may I not?" she cried.

"Mademoiselle wants to go to her papa," says Madame, at the

same moment, "I beg of you, Monsieur, to tell her it is

impossible, and that she had better come with me. She asserts

that her father will want her."

"That is all nonsense," said Graham hastily; "of course she

cannot come in now," then noticing Madelon's poor little face,

alternately white, and flushed with misery and passion, he

said, "Listen to me, Madelon; you can do your father no good

now. He would not know you, my poor child, and you would only

be in the way. But I promise you that by-and-by you shall see

him."

"By-and-by," said Madelon; "how soon?"

"As soon as we can possibly manage it."

Nothing, perhaps, would have induced Madelon at that moment to

have given into Madame Lavaux' unsupported persuasions, but

she yielded at once to Horace; indeed her sudden passion had

already died away at the sight of his face, at the sound of

the kind voice which she had somehow begun to associate with a

sense of help and protection. She did not quite give up her

point even now, however.

"I need not go upstairs," she said, with trembling lips and

tears in her eyes. "I may go into my own room, may I not?"

"Your room? Which is that?" asked Graham.

"This one--next to papa," she said, pointing to the door that

led into the passage.

"Yes, you can stay there if you like; but don't you think you

would be better with Madame Lavaux, than all by yourself in

there?"

"No, I would rather stay here," she answered, and then pausing

a moment at the door, "I may come and see him presently?" she

added wistfully, "I always nursed him when he was ill before."

"I am sure you are a very good little nurse," said Graham

kindly, "and I will tell you when you may come; but it will

not be just yet. So the best thing you can do will be to go to

bed, and then you will be quite ready for to-morrow."

He had no time to say more, for his services were required. He

gave Madelon a candle, closed the door that communicated

between the two rooms, and she was left alone.

CHAPTER II.

A Farewell Letter.

Madelon was left alone to feel giddy, helpless, bewildered in

the reaction from strong excitement and passion. She was quite

tired and worn-out, too, with her long watching and waiting;

too weary to cry even, or to think over all that had happened.

She did not go to bed, however; that would have been the last

thing she would have thought of doing; for, Graham's last

words notwithstanding, she had a notion that in a few minutes

she would be called to come and watch by her father, as she

had often done in the old days at Florence; so she only put

down her candle on the table, and curled herself up in a big

arm-chair; and in five minutes, in spite of her resolution to

keep wide awake till she should be summoned, she was sound

asleep.

Low voices were consulting together in the next room, people

coming in and out; the French doctor who had been sent for

arriving; cautious footsteps, and soft movements about the

injured man. But Madelon heard none of them, she slept soundly

on, and only awoke at last to see her candle go out with a

splutter, and the grey light of dawn creeping chilly into the

room. She awoke with a start and shiver of cold, and sat up

wondering to find herself there; then a rush of recollections

came over her of last night, or her father's accident, and she

jumped up quickly, straightening herself, stretching her

little stiff limbs, and pushing back her tumbled hair with

both hands from the sleepy eyes that were hardly fairly open

even now.

Her first movement was towards the door between the two

bedrooms, but she checked herself, remembering that Monsieur

le Docteur had told her she must not go in there till she was

called. There was another door to her room leading into the

corridor, and just at that moment she heard two people stop

outside of it, talking together in subdued tones.

"Then I leave the case altogether in your hands," says a

strange man's voice. "I am absolutely obliged to leave Paris

for B---- by the first train this morning, and cannot be back

till to-morrow night; so, as you say, Monsieur, you are in

Paris for some time----"

"For the next few days, at any rate," answered the other; and

Madelon recognized Graham's voice and English accent, "long

enough to see this case through to the end, I am afraid."

"If anything can be done, you will do it, I am sure,"

interrupted the other with warmth. "You must permit me to say,

Monsieur, as an old man may say to a young _confrère_, that it

is seldom one meets with so much coolness and skill in such a

very critical case. Nothing else could have saved----"

The voices died away as the speakers walked towards the end of

the passage. Madelon had hardly taken in the sense of the few

sentences she had heard; she was only anxious now to see

Graham and ask if she might go to her father, so she opened

her door softly and crept into the passage, meeting Horace as

he returned towards the sick-room after seeing the French

doctor off. He looked down on the little figure all pale and

ruffled in the cold grey light.

"Why, I thought you were asleep," he said. "Would you like to

see your father now? You may come in, but you must be very

quiet, for he is dozing."

"Then he is better?" said Madelon, anxiously.

Graham did not answer, he opened the door and led her in. The

room looked cheerless with the shaded night-lamp casting long

shadows, which mingles with those that the growing daylight

was chasing away. M. Linders was lying with his head supported

on a heap of pillows: his forehead was bandaged where the deep

cut had been given just above the brow, and he looked deadly

pale; his eyes were closed, he was breathing heavily, and

Madelon thought that, as Graham had told her, he was asleep;

but it was, in fact, rather a kind of stupor, from which

louder noises than the sound of her soft footfall would have

failed to rouse him. She went on tiptoe up to his bedside, and

stood gazing at him for a moment, and then with a swift,

silent movement buried her face in her hands, and burst into

an agony of crying.

"He is very ill--oh! is he going to die?" was all the answer

she could give in a hoarse whisper to Graham's attempts at

comfort, trying the while to smother her sobs, so that they

might not break out and wake her father.

"I hope not--I hope not," said Horace, quite grieved at the

sight of her distress; "but you must not cry so, Madelon; how

are you to nurse him and help him to get well again if you

do?"

She stopped sobbing a little at this, and tried to check her

tears.

"Do you really think he will get well again?" she said; "he

looks so ill."

Graham did not at once answer. In truth, he saw no prospect of

M. Linders' ultimate recovery, though he would probably regain

consciousness, and might, perhaps, linger on for a few days.

But there always remained the hope born of a determination not

to despair, and it seemed cruel, at that moment, not to share

it with our poor little Madelon.

"We must hope so," he said at last, "we must always hope for

the best, you know; but he must be kept very quiet, so you and

I, Madelon, must do our best to watch him, and see that he is

not disturbed."

"Yes," said Madelon, drying her eyes quite now. "I will take

care of him."

"Very well, then, if you will sit with him now, I will go and

speak to Madame Lavaux, if she is up; there are several

arrangements I have to make."

He went away, leaving Madelon contented for the moment, since

she could sit and watch by her father; she remained

motionless, her eyes fixed on his face, her hands clasped

round her knees, her whole mind so absorbed in keeping

perfectly quiet, the one thing she could do for him just then,

that she hardly ventured to breathe. But not even yet did she

understand the full meaning of what had happened, nor clearly

comprehend all that she had to dread. She was not really

afraid that her father would not recover; she knew indeed that

he was very ill, much worse than he had ever been at Florence,

and that it might be a long, long time before he would be well

again, but she did not think that he was going to die. She had

asked the question indeed, prompted by an instinctive terror

that had seized her, but in fact she hardly knew what death

meant, much less had she ever conceived of her father as dead,

or imagined life without him. Nevertheless, the sudden panic

had left a nameless, unrecognized fear lurking somewhere,

which gave an added intensity to her desire that he would wake

up and speak to her once more; and sometimes the beating of

her own heart seemed to deafen her, so that she could not hear

the sound of his heavy irregular breathing, and then nothing

but the dread of disturbing him could have prevented her from

jumping up and going to him to make sure that he was still

sleeping. When would he awaken and look at her and speak to

her again? It appeared so long since she had heard his voice,

and seen him smile at her; since he had wished her good-bye

the evening before, she seemed to have lived through such long

hours of unimagined terror and sorrow, and all without being

able to turn to him for the sure help, for the loving

protection and sympathy that had ever been ready for his

little Madelon; and even now, he did not know how she was

watching him, nor how she was longing to go to him and kiss

him, to put her arms round his neck, and lay her soft little

cheek caressingly against his. This thought was the most

grievous of all to Madelon just then, and the big tears came

into her eyes again, and fell slowly one by one into her lap.

Graham, however, returning presently, somehow seemed to bring

courage and consolation with him. Madelon brightened up at

once when he sat down by her and told her that he had asked

Madame Lavaux to send them up some coffee, so that they might

have it together there; and then, seeing the tears on her sad

little face, he assured her in his kind way that her father

would wake up presently and speak to her, and that, in the

meantime, she need not sit quite so still, as she would not

disturb him if she moved about quietly; and when, by-and-by,

the _café-au-lait_ arrived, they had their little meal together,

whilst he told her in a low voice how her father had partially

recovered his consciousness in the night and asked for her,

but had been quite satisfied when he heard she had gone to

bed, and had afterwards gone off to sleep as Madelon saw him

now.

"By-the-by, Madelon," Graham said presently, "tell me if you

have any relations living in Paris, or any friends that you go

and visit sometimes?"

"No," says Madelon wondering, "I have no relations--only papa."

"No uncles, or aunts, or cousins?"

"No," said Madelon again, "only Uncle Charles, who died, you

know."

"Ah, yes--that was an English uncle; but your papa, has he no

brothers or sisters in Paris, or anywhere else?"

"I never heard of any," said Madelon, to whom this idea of

possible relations seemed quite a new one. "I never go to

visit anyone."

"Then you have no friends living in Paris--no little

companions, no ladies who come to see you?"

"No," answers Madelon, shaking her head, "we don't know anyone

in Paris, except some gentlemen who come to play with papa--

like Monsieur Legros, you know--only some are nicer than he is;

but I don't know the names of them all. At Wiesbaden I knew a

Russian princess, who used to ask me to go and see her at the

hotel--oh, yes, and a German Countess, and a great many people

that we met at the tables and at the balls, but I daresay I

shall never see them again; we meet so many people, you know."

"And you have no other friends?"

"Oh, yes," said Madelon, her eyes shining suddenly, "there was

the American artist, who lived in our house in Florence, and

the old German who taught me to sing and play the violin; I

was very fond of him, he was so good--so good."

"Who were they?" asked Graham.

Madelon explained, not in the least understanding the purport

of all these questions, but her explanation did not help

Graham much. In truth, he was revolving some anxious thoughts.

In accepting the charge of this sick man, he felt that he had

incurred a certain responsibility, not only towards M.

Linders, but towards his little girl, and any relations or

friends that he might have. It was on Madelon's account above

all that he felt uneasy; what was to become of her if her

father died--and Graham had little doubt that he was dying--all

friendless and alone in the world as she would apparently be?

Had any arrangements for the future been made, any provision

left for her? What was to become of this poor child, clinging

so closely to her father, and so dependent upon him that she

seemed to have no thoughts nor ideas apart from him?

Graham had been questioning Madame Lavaux as to what she knew

of M. Linders and his life, and had gained much information on

some points, though very little on others. Madame Lavaux had

readily related the history of Madelon's birth and Madame

Linders' death. It was a story she was fond of telling; it had

been a little romance in the ordinary routine of hotel life,

and one in which, when she had duly set forth M. Linders'

heartlessness and her own exertions, she felt that she must

shine in an exceptionally favourable light; and indeed it was

so pitiful a tale the her hearers could not but share the

indignation and compassion she felt and expressed when she

spoke of _cette pauvre dame_, who so young and so beautiful had

been left alone to give birth to her infant, and, still alone,

to die four months later. But when Graham endeavoured to get

any facts bearing directly upon the present emergency, he

found Madame Lavaux less well-informed. M. Linders had come to

her hotel year after year, she said, and she had always taken

him in, on the little girl's account (who was a _chère petite_,

though troublesome sometimes, as children would be); otherwise

she would have been sorry to have such a _mauvais sujet_ about

the house, in and out at all hours, and queer-looking men

sitting up with him half the night. Had he any relations or

friends? That she did not know, she had never seen or heard of

any, but she did not wonder at that--they did well to keep

clear of him, a bad man, who had broken more hearts than his

wife's, she would answer for it. For the rest, she knew little

about him, she added, with a sudden fit of professional

reticence, induced by the recollection that it might be as

well not to gossip too much about the affairs of her

_clientèle;_ he came and went, paid his bill regularly enough,

generally seemed to have money at his command, and of course

it was not for her to inquire how he got it, though she might

have her suspicions. What was to become of his little girl in

case of his death? Madame had never thought of that: did

Monsieur think he was going to die? In that case how much

better to have taken him to the hospital; a death in the house

was always so inconvenient and disagreeable--not that she had

grudged it to that _pauvre_ Madame Linders, but this was a

different thing altogether; would he certainly die? Monsieur

said he did not know, one must always hope, but the case was a

grave one, and seeing that Madame could give him no help he

left her.

He had questioned Madeleine in the hope that she would be able

to tell him of some one for whom he could send, or to whom he

could at least write, but here again he was baffled, and he

could only wait now for the moment when M. Linders should

recover consciousness.

The hotel was all astir by this time with life and movement,

doors opening and shutting, footsteps up and down the

staircases and corridors, voices talking, calling, grumbling,

downstairs eating and drinking going on with much clattering

of plates and dishes, fiacres and omnibuses driving up,

tourists setting off in gay parties for their day's sight-

seeing, luggage being moved, travellers coming, travellers

going, to England, to the north, to the south, to the ends of

the earth--all the busy restless hotel life going on except in

this one silent room, where two people sat very quietly

watching a third, who, as one of them foresaw sadly enough,

would never take part in all this stir and bustle of life

again. Outside was broad sunny daylight now, but within it was

all dim and cool, for the night had been hot, and the window

stood wide open, and now the morning air blew freshly through

the Venetian shutters, that were closed to darken the room and

shut out the sun, which later would shine full upon them. The

morning hours slipped away; there was nothing to be done while

M. Linders remained in this state, and Madelon, by Horace's

advice, took a book, and seated herself on a low stool by the

window to read. Now and then she would stand looking at her

father with a most pitiful yearning in her great brown eyes;

once or twice, M. Linders, in his dull slumber, half torpor,

half sleep, seemed in some sort conscious of her presence; he

moved his head uneasily, said "Madeleine," and then some low

muttered words which she could not catch, but he never quite

roused up, and after each throb of expectation and hope, she

could only return to her book, and her silent watching.

Graham went in and out, or sat reading and writing at the

table, and at twelve o'clock he made Madelon go downstairs to

breakfast with Madame Lavaux in her own little sitting-room.

Madame, who was really very fond of her, had forgotten all

about the altercation of the night before. Indeed she was both

good-natured and kind-hearted as soon as she could allow her

better impulses to have their own way; but she was a little

apt, as are most people to whom life resolves itself into a

narrow ministering to their personal pains and pleasures, to

look upon untoward occurrences as evidence of the causeless

animosity of some vague impersonality, continually on the

watch to adjust the largest events of life so as to occasion

her particular inconvenience. If half Paris and its environs

had been destroyed by an earthquake, her first impression of

the catastrophe would very possibly have been that it could

not have happened at a worse moment for raising the price of

early asparagus, though the further reflection that the

general want of accommodation would justify her in doubling

her hotel tariff, might in some measure have restored her

faith in the fitness of things. After this, she would have

found time to be overwhelmed with compassion for the

sufferers. M. Linders' accident, she found, had, as yet, been

attended with no evil results, so far as she was concerned; no

one had been disturbed in the night, no one had left, so that,

for the moment, it had been safely transferred to that region

of abstract facts, which she could consider dispassionately,

and judge by the light of her kindly impulses; and it was

under the influence of these that she was now bent on petting

and making much of Madelon, giving her cakes and confitures

and all kinds of good things. On second thoughts she had

rejected the idea that M. Linders was going to die; it would

be so very troublesome and inconvenient, that she found it

pleasanter to persuade herself that he would surely recover;

and now, on the strength of his conviction, and with a kind

wish to console Madelon, she became so encouraging, so certain

he would be well again in a few weeks--in a few weeks did she

say?--in a few days--with this clever English doctor, who, as

she improvised for the occasion, everyone knew was one of the

first doctors in London--with all this Madame so encouraged and

cheered our Madelon, that she came upstairs again at the end

of an hour looking quite bright, and almost expecting to see

some wonderful change for the better in her father. M.

Linders, however still lay as she had left him, and perhaps

the sight of his pale bloodless face chilled her, for she

crept silently to her corner, and took up her book again,

without saying a word of her new hopes. Presently Graham,

looking up from his writing, found that she had done the best

thing possible under the circumstances, for, with her book

lying open upon her lap, and her head resting against the

window-frame, she had fallen fast asleep. He went up to her,

raised her gently in his arms, and carried her into her own

room; so perfectly sound asleep was she, that she hardly

stirred, even when he laid her on her bed; and then, drawing

the curtain round her, he left her to herself.

If this long morning had passed slowly and sadly for our

sorrowful little Madelon, it had been a time of anxiety and

uneasiness enough for Horace Graham also; who had never, I

daresay, felt more nervous than during these quiet hours when

M. Linders, partly from the effects of his accident, partly

from the opiates that had been given him, lay unconscious. He

was young in his profession, and though clever and skilled

enough in the technical part, he had had little experience in

what may be called the moral part of it, and he positively

shrank form the moment when this man, of whose life and

character he knew something, should wake up, and he should

have to tell him that he was dying. It was so absolutely

necessary, too, that he should know the danger he was in; for

if, as was too probable from his mode of life, his affairs

were in disorder, and his arrangements for his child's future

had still to be made, the time that remained to him was in all

human probability but short. For the rest, Graham felt in

himself small capacity for preaching or exhortation, and

indeed from a professional point of view, he dreaded a

possible outburst of excitement and remorse, as lessening his

last chance of saving his patient's life; and yet to him--

young, full of energy, and hope, and resolution, though no

nearer perfection and tried wisdom than any other man with

crude beliefs and enthusiasms and untested powers for good or

evil--to him death still appeared one of the most awful facts

in life, and he could not think unmoved of the task of

announcing to such a man as this, that his last chances were

over, and such life as one can live in this world was for him

a thing of the past for ever now. Not a twelvemonth later,

Graham had stood by so many dying men, had listened to so many

dying speeches, had seen death met in so many forms, and with

such strange variety of character, with indifference or

calmness, or resignation, with wild triumph, or wilder

remorse, that he looked back with a sort of wonder on his

present inexperience and perplexity. Not the less, however,

did he now sit framing a dozen speeches one after the other,

dreading the effect of saying too much, and fearing to say too

little, till, about an hour after Madelon had fallen asleep,

M. Linders at length stirred, opened his eyes, and tried to

move.

Graham was at his side instantly, and the sick man gazed up at

him in silence for a moment.

"What has happened?" he said at last in a feeble voice: "who

are you? where is Madelon?"

"Madelon is in the next room asleep," answered Graham; "you

met with an accident last night--I am an English doctor staying

in the hotel--the French one had to leave--do you remember?"

He paused between each sentence, and M. Linders' eyes, which

were fixed upon him as he spoke, gradually acquired an

expression of intelligence as memory returned to him. He

closed them again and turned away his head.

"Yes, I remember something about it," he said, "but--_que

diable_--I cannot move a limb; am I much hurt?"

"A good deal," said Graham, helping him to raise himself a

little. "You had better keep quiet, and take this," giving him

a cordial, as M. Linders sank back exhausted.

"That is better," he said, after a few minutes of struggling

breathing. "So I am a good deal hurt? Am I--am I going to die

by chance, M. le Docteur?"

He spoke in his old half-sarcastic, half-cynical way, but a

feeble, gasping voice, that made an effect of contrast, as of

the tragic face espied behind the grinning mask. Somehow it

touched Graham, burdened as he was with the consciousness of

the death-warrant he had to pronounce, and he paused before

answering. M. Linders noticed his hesitation.

"Bah!" he said, "speak, then; do you think I am afraid--a

coward that fears to know the worst? I shall not be the first

man that has died, nor, in all probability, the last. We ought

to be used to it by this time, _nous autres!_"

"Perhaps it is always best to be prepared for the worst," says

Graham, recovering himself at this address, and taking refuge

at last in a conventional little speech. "And though we must

always hope for the best, I do not think it right to conceal

from you, Monsieur, that you are very much injured and shaken.

If you have any arrangements to make, anyone you would wish to

send for, or to see, I earnestly advise you to lose no time."

He watched M. Linders narrowly as he spoke, and saw a sudden

gleam of fear or excitement light up his dull eyes for a

moment, whilst his fingers clutched nervously at the sheet,

but that was all the sign he made.

"So--I am going to die?" he said, after a pause. "Well--that is

ended, then. Send for anyone? Whom should I send for?" he

added, with some vehemence. "For your priests, I suppose, to

come and light candles, and make prayers over me--is that what

you are thinking of, by chance? I won't have one of them--you

need not think of it, do you hear? --not one."

"Pardon me," said Graham, "but it was not of priests I was

thinking just then--indeed, it seems to me that, at these

moments, a man can turn nowhere so safely as to his God--but

there are others----"

He spoke quietly enough, but M. Linders interrupted him with a

fierce, hoarse whisper. "I can arrange my own affairs. I have

no one to send to--no one I wish to see. Let me die in peace."

In spite of his assumed indifference, his whole soul was

filled and shaken with a sudden dread terror; for the moment

he had forgotten even his child. Graham saw it, but could not

urge him further just then; he only passed his arm under the

pillow, so as to raise his head a little, and then said, with

such professional cheerfulness as he could muster,

"_Allons_, Monsieur, you must have courage. Calm yourself; you

are not going to die yet, and we must hope for the best. You

may live to see many people yet."

M. Linders appeared scarcely to hear what he was saying; but

in a few moments his face relaxed, and a new expression came

into it, which seemed to soften the grey, ghastly look.

"My poor little girl!" he said, with a sort of groan--"my

little Madelon!--to leave thee all alone, _pauvre petite!_"

"It was precisely of her that I wished to speak," said Graham.

"I am afraid, in any case, you must look forward to a long

illness, and, on her account, is there no friend, no relation

you would wish to send for?"

"I have no friends--no relations," said M. Linders,

impatiently. "A long illness? Bah! M. le Docteur, I know, and

you know that I am going to die--to-day, to-morrow, who knows?--

and she will be left alone. She has no one in the world but

me, and she has been foolish enough to love me--my little one!"

He paused for a moment, and then went on, with a vehemence

that struggled for utterance, with his hoarse feeble voice and

failing breath.

"If this cursed accident had happened but one day sooner or

later, I could have left her a fortune--but a superb fortune;

only one day sooner--I had it two days ago--or to-morrow--I

should have had my revenge last night of that _scélérat_--that

devil--that Legros, and won back the money he cheated me of,

he--he--of all men, a mere beginner, a smatterer--ah! if I had

been the man I once was, it would have been a different

account to settle----"

He lay back panting, but began again before Graham could

speak.

"I only want time--give me a little time, and my little

Madeleine shall have such a fortune as shall make her

independent of every one; or stay, why not send for him now? I

will give you his address--yes, now--now at once, before it is

too late!"

"That is quite impossible, Monsieur," Graham answered with

decision; "and if you agitate yourself in this way, I must

refuse to listen to another word. You are doing all you can to

lessen your chances of recovery."

"You do not play, Monsieur?" said M. Linders, struck with a

new idea, and not in the least attending to what Graham was

saying.

"Do you want to win my money?" said the young man, half

smiling. "No, I do not play, nor, if I did, have I any money

to lose. Leave all these notions alone, I entreat of you; calm

yourself; you need not trouble yourself to speak much, but

just tell me what your wishes are concerning your little girl--

in any case it is always best to be prepared. Have you made

any will? Is there any one to whose care you would wish to

entrust her in the event of your death?"

M. Linders had exhausted his strength and his passion for the

moment, and answered quietly enough. No, he had made no will,

he said--of what use? Everything he had was hers, of course--

little enough too, as matters stood. He owned he did not know

what was to become of her; he had made no arrangements--he had

never thought of its coming to this, and then he had always

counted on leaving her a fortune. He had sometimes thought of

letting her be brought up for the stage; that might be

arranged now, if he could see S----, the manager of the Théâtre

----. Could he be sent for at once?

"Certainly, if you really wish it," answered Graham with some

hesitation, and then added frankly, "I have no sort of right

to offer an opinion, but will you not consider a moment before

fixing on such a fate for your child? She is surely very young

to be thrown amongst strangers, on such a doubtful career,

especially without you at hand to protect her."

"It is true I shall not be there," said the father with a

groan; "I had forgotten that. And I shall never see my little

one grown up. Ah! what is to become of her?"

"Has she no relations?" said Graham, "in England for instance----"

"In England!" cried M. Linders fiercely, "what could make you

fancy that?"

"I had understood that her mother was English----" began Graham.

"You are right, Monsieur; her mother was English, but she has

no English relations, or, if she has, they are nothing to her,

and she shall never know them. No," he said slowly, after a

pause, "I suppose there is only one thing to be done, and yet

I would almost rather she lay here dead by my side, that we

might be buried together in one grave; it would perhaps be

happier for her, poor little one! Ah, what a fate! but it must

be--you are right, I cannot send her out alone and friendless

into the world, she must go to her aunt."

"She has an aunt, then?" said Graham, with some surprise.

"Yes, Monsieur, she has an aunt, my sister Thérèse, with whom

I quarrelled five and twenty years ago, and whom I have

cordially hated ever since; and if ever woman deserved to be

hated, she does;" and indeed, though he had not mentioned his

sister's name for years, the very sound of it seemed to revive

the old enmity in all its fresh bitterness. "She lives near

Liége," he went on presently. "She is the Superior of a

convent there, having risen to that eminence through her

superior piety and manifold good works, doubtless. Mon Dieu!"

he cried, with another of his sudden impotent bursts of

passion and tenderness, "that it should have come to this,

that I should shut up my little one in a convent! And she will

be miserable--she will blame me, she will think me cruel; but

what can I do? what can I do?"

"But it seems to me the best thing possible," said Graham,

who, in truth, was not a little relieved by this sudden and

unexpected solution of all difficulties. "So many children are

educated in convent, and are very happy there; she will be

certainly well taught and cared for, and you must trust to

your sister for the future."

"Never!" he said, half raising himself on his elbow with a

mighty effort. "Well taught!--yes, I know the sort of teaching

she will get there; she will be taught to hate and despise me,

and then they will make her a nun--they will try to do it, but

that shall never be! I will make Madelon promise me that. My

little one a nun!--I will not have it! Ah! I risk too much; she

shall not go!"

He fell back on the pillow gasping, panting, almost sobbing,

all pretence and semblance of cynicism and indifference gone

in the miserable moment of weakness and despair. Was it for

this, then, that he had taught his child to love him--that he

had watched and guarded and cherished her--that he should place

her now in the hands of his enemy, and that she should learn

to hate his memory when he was dead? Ah! he was dying, and

from the grave there would be no return--no hand could be

stretched out from thence to claim her--no voice make itself

heard to appeal to her old love for him, to remind her of

happy bygone days when she had believed in him, and to bid her

to be faithful to him still. Those others would be able to

work their will then, while he lay silent for evermore, and

his little one would too surely learn what manner of father

she had had, perhaps--who knows?--learn to rejoice in the day

that had set her free from his influence.

Graham very likely understood something of what was passing in

M. Linders' mind, revealed, as it had been, by those few

broken words, for he said in a kind voice,

"I think you may surely trust to your child's love for you, M.

Linders, for she seems to have found all her happiness in it

hitherto, and it is so strong and true that I do not think it

will be easily shaken, nor can I fancy anyone will be cruel

enough to attempt it." And then, seeing how little capable M.

Linders seemed at that moment of judging wisely, he went on to

urge the necessity of Madelon's being sent to her aunt as her

natural guardian, representing the impossibility of leaving

her without money or friends in the midst of strangers.

"There is a little money," said M. Linders, "a few thousand

francs--I do not know how much exactly; you will find it in

that desk. It would start her for the stage; she has talent--

she would rise. S---- heard her sing once; if he were here now,

we might arrange----"

He was rambling off in a low broken voice, hardly conscious,

perhaps, of what he was saying. Graham once more interposed.

"No, no," he said, "you must not think of it. Let her go to

her aunt. Don't be uneasy about her getting there safely; I

will take charge of her."

"You will?" said M. Linders, fixing his dim eyes on Graham,

and with some resumption of his old manner. "Pardon, Monsieur,

but who are you, that you take such an interest in my

affairs?"

"Anyone must take an interest in your little girl," said

Graham warmly, and in the kind, frank voice that somehow

always carried with it the conviction of his sincerity and

good faith, "and I am truly glad that the chance that brought

me to this hotel has put it in my power to be of use to you

and to her. For the rest, my name is Graham, and I am an army

surgeon. I don't suppose you recollect the circumstance,

Monsieur, but I very well remember meeting you at

Chaudfontaine some years ago."

"No, I don't remember," said M. Linders faintly, "but I think

I may trust you. You will see that Madelon reaches Liége

safely?"

"I will take her there myself," answered Graham. "Would you

like to send any message to your sister?"

"I will write," said M. Linders, "or rather you shall write

for me; but presently--I cannot talk any more now--it must do

presently."

Indeed he was faint from exhaustion, and Graham could only do

all that was possible to revive him, and then remain by his

side till he should have recovered his strength a little; and

as he sat there, silently watching, I daresay he preached a

little sermon to himself, but in no unfriendly spirit to his

patient, we may be sure. This, then, was what life might come

to--this might be the end of all its glorious possibilities, of

all its boundless hopes and aims. To this man, as to another,

had the great problem been presented, and he had solved it--

thus; and to Graham, in the fulness of his youth, and

strength, and energy, the solution seemed stranger than the

problem. To most of us, perhaps, as years go on, life comes to

be represented by its failures rather than its successes, by

its regrets rather than its hopes; enthusiasms die out,

illusions vanish, belief in the perfectibility of ourselves

and of others fades, as we learn to realize the shortness of

life, the waywardness of human nature, the baffling power of

circumstances, too easily allowed; but in their place, a

humble faith in a more perfect and satisfying hereafter, which

shall be the complement of our existence here, the fulfilment

of our unfinished efforts, our many shortcomings, springs up,

let us trust, to encourage us to new strivings, to ever-fresh

beginnings, which shall perhaps be completed and bear fruit in

another world; perhaps be left on earth to work into the grand

economy of progress--not wholly useless in any case. But at

four or five and twenty, in spite of some failures and

disappointments, the treasure of existence to an honest, frank

heart, still seems inexhaustible as it is inestimable. The

contrast between the future Graham looked forward to, full of

hopes and ambitions, and this past whose history he could

guess at, and whose results he contemplated, forced itself

upon him, and an immense compassion filled the young man's

heart at the sight of this wasted life, of this wayward mind,

lighted up with the sudden, passionate gleams of tenderness

for his child, the one pure affection perhaps that survived to

witness to what had been--a great compassion, an honest,

wondering pity for this man who had thus recklessly squandered

his share of the common birth right. Ah! which of us, standing

on safe shores, and seeing, as all must see at times, the sad

wreck of some shattered life cast up by the troubled waves at

our feet, does not ask himself, in no supercilious spirit,

surely, but with an awe-struck humility, "Who or what hath

made thee to differ?"

Perhaps, as M. Linders lay there, he also preached to himself

a little sermon, after his own peculiar fashion, for when, at

the end of half an hour, he once more aroused himself, all

signs of agitation had disappeared, and it was with a perfect

calmness that he continued the conversation. Graham could not

but admire this composure in the man whom but just now he had

seen shaken with passion and exhausted with conflicting

emotions; whom indeed he had had to help, and judge for, and

support in his hour of weakness and suffering; whilst now M.

Linders had resumed his air of calm superiority as the man of

the world, which seemed at once to repel and forbid support

and sympathy from the youth and inexperience at his side.

"You are right, Monsieur," he said, breaking the silence

abruptly, and speaking in a clear, though feeble voice,

"Madelon must go her aunt. Did I understand you to say you

would take charge of her to Liége?"

"I will certainly," said Graham; "if----"

"I am exceedingly indebted to you," said M. Linders, "but I am

afraid such a journey may interfere with your own plans."

"Not in the least," replied Graham. "I am only travelling for

amusement, and have no one to consult but myself."

"Ah--well, I shall not interfere with your amusement long; and

in the meantime, believe me, I am sensible of your goodness.

It may make matters easier if you take a letter from me to my

sister. I am afraid I cannot write myself, but I could

dictate--if it be not troubling you too much--there are a pen

and ink somewhere there; and if you could give me anything--I

still feel rather faint."

Graham rose, gave him another cordial, drew a small table to

the bedside, and sat down to write. M. Linders considered for

a moment, and then began to dictate.

"Ma soeur,--We parted five and twenty years ago, with a mutual

determination never to see each other again--a resolution which

has been perfectly well kept, and which there is no danger of

our breaking now, as I shall be in my grave before you read

this letter; and you will have the further consolation of

reflecting that, as we have never met again in this world,

neither is there any probability of our doing so in another----"

"Pardon me," said Graham, laying down his pen, as M. Linders

dictated these last words, "but you are about to recommend

your child to your sister's care; of what use can it be to

begin with words that can only embitter any ill-feeling there

may have been between you?"

"But it is a great consolation I am offering her there," says

M. Linders, in his feeble voice. "However, as you will--

_recommençons;_ but no more interruptions, Monsieur, for my

strength is not inexhaustible."

"Ma soeur,--It is now five and twenty years since we parted,

with the determination never to see each other again. Whether

we have done well to keep this resolution or not, matters

little now; we shall, at any rate, have no temptation in the

future to break it, for I shall be in my grave before your

receive this letter. I am dying, a fact which may possess some

faint interest for you even now--or may not--that is not to the

purpose either. It is not of myself that I would speak, but of

my child. I am sending her to you, Thérèse, as to the only

relative she has in the world; look on her, if you prefer it,

as your mother's only grandchild; we had a mother once who

loved me, and whom you professed to love--for her sake be kind

to Madelon. I am not rich, and without money I cannot leave

her amongst strangers, otherwise I would have found some other

means of providing for her; at the same time, I do not send

her to you absolutely penniless--she will take to you the sum

of three thousand francs, which will provide her board for the

next two or three years, at any rate; I do not cast her on

your charity. I have two requests to make, and if your

religion teaches you to have any regard for the wishes of a

dying man, I trust you will hold them sacred as such. In the

first place, I demand of you that you should not bring her up

to be a nun; she has not, and never will have, the slightest

vocation--is not that the right word?--for such a life. My wish

is that she should be educated for the stage, but I do not

absolutely desire it; circumstances must in some measure

decide, and something must be left to your discretion, but a

nun she shall not be. In the second place, respect my memory,

so far as my little Madeleine is concerned. Keep your powers

of abusing me, if they be not already exhausted, for the

benefit of others; she has never been separated from me since

she was an infant, and the little fool has actually learnt to

love me, and to believe in me. It is an innocent delusion, and

has made her happy--do not disturb it. I tell you, my sister,

it will be the worst work you have yet wrought upon earth, and

an evil day for you, if, even when I am in my grave, you try

to come between me and my daughter.

"Your brother,

"Adolphe Linders."

"I will sign it," said the sick man, holding out his hand for

the pen. He had dictated the letter with some pauses and gasps

for breath, but in the uniform indifferent voice that he had

adopted since the beginning of the conversation. He dropped

the pen, when he had scrawled the signature with almost

powerless fingers, and his hand fell heavily on the bed again.

"That is done," he said, and, after a pause, continued:

"Monsieur, circumstances have compelled me to place a

confidence in you, with which, at another time, I should have

hesitated to burden you, fearing to cause you inconvenience."

"You cause me no inconvenience, and I shall do my best to

carry out your wishes," said Horace. "In return, I must beg of

you to keep yourself quiet now."

"One moment, Monsieur--my money you will find in that desk, as

I have said; after paying my funeral and other expenses, you

will, I think, find there is still the sum left that I have

named in my letter. I must beg of you to hand it over to my

sister. I can trust her so far, I believe; and I will not have

my child a pauper on her hands, dependent on her charity for

food and clothing; otherwise it might have been wiser--however,

it is too late now, and in two of three years much may happen.

One word more, and I have done. I have no sort of claim on

your kindness, Monsieur, but you have proved yourself a

friend, and as such I would ask you not to lose sight of

Madelon entirely. She will be but a friendless little one when

I am gone, and I have not much confidence in her aunt's tender

mercies."

"You may depend upon it that I will not," said Graham

earnestly, and hardly thinking of the sort of responsibility

he was accepting.

"Thank you; then that is all. And now, Monsieur le Docteur,

how long do you give me?"

"How long?" said Graham.

"Ah! how long to live?--to-day, to-night, to-morrow? How long,

in short?"

Then Graham spoke plainly at last, without further reticence

or concealment, so useless in the face of this indifference

and levity, real or affected.

"M. Linders," he said, "the chance on which your recovery

hangs is so slight, that I do not think it probable, hardly

possible, that you can live over to-morrow. Will you not try

to understand this?"

There was something so wistful and kind and honest in Graham's

expression as he stood there, looking down on his patient,

that M. Linders was touched, perhaps, for he held out his hand

with a little friendly gesture; but even then he could not, or

would not abandon his latest pose of dying _en philosophe_.

"I understand well enough," he answered; "a man does not

arrive at my age, _mon ami_, without having faced death more

than once. You think, perhaps, it has terrors for me?--not at

all; to speak frankly, pain has, but I do not suffer so much

now. That is a bad sign, perhaps. Well, never mind, you have

done your best for me, I know, and I thank you. Except for

that little regret that you know of as regards Legros and--and

Madelon, I am content that life should come to an end--it is

not too delightful in any case, and those that I cared for

most did their best to spoil mine for me. For people who

believe in a hereafter, and choose to contemplate a doubtful

future, adorned with flames and largely peopled with devils, I

can imagine death to have its unpleasant side; but I look upon

all such notions as unphilosophical in the extreme. And now,

Monsieur, I think I could sleep a little. By-and-by, when

Madelon awakes, I should like to see her."

He turned his head away, and presently fell into a light dose.

Did he mean, or did he persuade himself that he meant half of

what he said? Graham could not decide; and, in truth, he had

uttered his little speech with an air of dignity and

resignation that half imposed upon the younger man, and

impressed him, in spite of his better judgment. An heroic soul

going forth with an unfeigned stoicism to meet its fate? Or an

unhappy man, striving to hide a shivering consciousness from

himself and others, with an assumption of philosophical

scepticism? Ah! who was Graham, that he should judge or weigh

the secrets of another man's heart at such an hour as this? He

left the bedside, and went back once more to his writing.

A few minutes afterwards, Madame Lavaux knocked softly, and

looked into the room. Graham went out into the passage to

speak to her, closing the door after him.

"How is he now, the poor Monsieur?" asks Madame.

"He is sleeping now," Graham answered; "there is nothing to be

done but to keep him as quiet as possible."

"And will he recover, do you think?"

"Hardly. One must always hope; but he is very ill."

"Ah! well," said the landlady, resigning herself; "but, after

all," she added, "it is sad to see a man die like that; and

then there is the child. Otherwise the world will be none the

worse for wanting him. But what is to become of the little

girl?"

"That is all arranged," replied Graham, "she is to go to an

aunt, a sister of her father's, who, it appears, is Superior

of a convent near Liége. But can you tell me, Madame, had

Madame Linders quarrelled with her English relations? When she

was dying alone here, had she no friends of her own that she

could have sent for to be with her?"

"She would not have them, Monsieur; you see, she was devoted

to her husband in spite of all, this poor Madame, and _he_ had

quarrelled with her relations, I believe; at any rate, she

would not send for them. 'Adolphe will come,' she would always

say, 'and it would vex him to find anyone here,' and so she

died alone, for he never arrived till the next morning.

However," continues Madame, "it was not of that I came to

speak now, it was to know if Monsieur would not wish to have a

nurse to-night to attend the poor gentleman? It is what we

must have had if you had not been here, and there is no reason

why you should knock yourself up with nursing him."

"It certainly might be better," said Graham considering, "I

had thought of it, but--however, you are quite right, Madame, a

nurse we will have; where can I get one?"

Madame said he had better apply to the Soeurs de Charité, and

gave him an address, adding that if he would like to go

himself she could spare half an hour to sit with Monsieur

there.

"I will go at once," replied Graham, "whilst he is sleeping;

he is not likely to rouse again just a present; don't let him

talk or move if he should awake, but it is not probable that

he will."

So it was arranged, and Madame Lavaux established herself with

her knitting in the dim, silent room, whilst Graham departed

on his errand, satisfied that his patient was in safe hands.

Not ten minutes had elapsed, however, when a knock came at the

door of the sick-room, and a summons--could Madame come at

once? Madame cast a look at her charge; he was perfectly still

and quiet, sleeping profoundly apparently; there could be no

harm in leaving him for a moment. She went, intending to

return immediately; but, alas! for human intentions,

downstairs she found a commotion that drove M. Linders, M. le

Docteur, and everything else out of her head for the time

being. Madame la Comtesse _au premier_ had lost her diamond

ring--her ring, worth six thousand francs, an heirloom, an

inestimable treasure; lost it? it had been stolen--she knew it,

felt convinced of it; she had left it for five minutes on her

dressing-table whilst she went to speak to some dressmaker or

milliner, and on her return it had vanished. Unpardonable

carelessness on her part, she admitted, but that did not alter

the fact; it had been stolen, and must be found; house,

servants, visitors, luggage, all must be searched and

ransacked. Where were the gendarmes? let all these people be

taken into custody at once, pointing to the group of startled,

wondering, servants,--let everyone be taken into custody.

Madame Lavaux had enough to do and to think of for the next

hour, we may be sure, and though, at the end of that time,

Madame la Comtesse found the ring safe in the corner of her

pocket, whither it had slipped off her finger, and the

disturbance was at an end, not so were the consequences of

that disturbance.

For in the meantime a very different scene was being acted out

upstairs.

CHAPTER III.

Madam's Vigil.

Five minutes after Madame Lavaux had left the room, Madelon,

just awakened from her sound sleep, came creeping gently in.

It was almost dark by this time, for it was late in the

afternoon, and the Venetian shutters were still closed that

had kept out the heat and glare all day; but now she threw

them back, and let in the tepid evening breeze, and the faded

light of the dying day; carriages and carts were rattling in

the street below, shrill voices came from the opposite houses

where lights were appearing here and there; high up in the

serene grey-blue sky a few reddened clouds had caught the last

gleams of the setting sun.

"Madelon," said M. Linders, roused by the noise she had made

in opening the shutters.

A sudden throb of joy came over her as she heard his voice

again, and she went swiftly and stood by his bedside.

"Are you better, papa?" she said, putting her two little cool

hands into one of his, hot with fever.

"We are alone, are we not?" he answered, looking feebly

around. "Come and sit up here by me. Can you jump up? That is

right," as she climbed up and nestled close to him, her feet

tucked under the sheet; "here, _petite_, let me put my arm round

you."

He raised himself with an effort, and passed his arm round

her, so that she could lay her head on his shoulder; and then

in answer to her question,--

"No, I am not better," he said, "and I do not suppose I ever

shall be better now. But never mind that," as she raised her

head suddenly, and looked at him with wide, frightened eyes,

"let us talk a little, Madelon. We have always been happy

together; have we not, my child?"

"Ah! yes, papa."

"And later, when you are grown into a woman--as you will be,

you know, by-and-by--and you think of the years when you were

when you were a little girl, you will like to recall them;

will you not, Madelon? You will remember that they were

happy?"

"Yes, papa, I have been happy, ah, so happy!" says Madelon,

half crying, and nestling closer to him; "but why do you talk

so? What do you mean?"

"You will think of all our travels together, what pretty

placed we have visited, all the _fête_ days we have spent; and

you will remember that, whatever else I may or may not have

done, I have always tried to make you happy, and to be a good

papa to my little one. Promise me that, Madelon."

"I promise it, papa," she said. "How could I forget? Why

should I not remember? Why do you talk to me in this way,

papa? Are you very ill?"

"Very ill," he replied, holding her tighter to him, "so ill

that all those happy days are come to an end for me, and for

you, too, _ma petite;_ we shall never go about again together.

You--you--" his voice broke with a sort of groan, but he went on

again directly, "I wonder what my little Madelon will be like

when she grows into a great girl? I should have liked to have

seen you, my little one. I wonder if you will be tall--I dare

say you will--for your mother was tall, and your face is very

like hers."

"Am I like her, papa?"

"Very," he said, stroking her wavy hair, with his feeble

fingers; "your eyes--yes, you have eyes that resemble hers

exactly, and sometimes I have thought that when you grew up it

would be almost like seeing her over again--for you know I did

love her," he added, in a lower tone, turning his head

restlessly on the pillow, "though they said I did not. I never

meant her to die alone; they might have known that. I wish--

Bah! I am forgetting----"

"What did you say, papa?"

"Nothing," he answered; "I think I was forgetting where I was.

How dark it is growing! you must light the candles soon. I

must look at you again; you know I want to see your eyes, and

smile, and pretty hair once more. And you, my little one, you

will not forget my face? Don't cry, don't cry," he said, with

a sudden pain in his voice; "I cannot bear it. I have never

made you cry before: have I, my child?"

"Never, never," she said, stifling her tears desperately.

"You must think of me sometimes when you are grown up," he

went on in his feeble voice, harping still on the same

subject. "You will have no money, my poor little one--if it had

not been for that devil Legros--but it is too late to think of

that now. Well, I think you will have beauty, and that will go

far even if you have no _dot_, and I should like you to marry

well. But when you have a husband, and are rich, perhaps, you

must still think sometimes of the days when you were a little

girl, and had a papa who loved no one in the world so much as

his little Madelon."

"Papa, I want no money, nor husband, nor anything else," cried

Madelon, in a burst of tears, and throwing both her arms round

his neck. "I want nobody but you, and I love you, and always

shall love you better than any one else in the world. Papa,

are you going to die and leave me?"

"So it seems," he said bitterly. "It is not my choice,

Madelon, but one cannot arrange these little matters for

oneself, you see. Now listen, my child; I am not going to

leave you quite alone. I have a sister, who is your aunt

Thérèse; I have never spoken to you about her before, for she

became a nun, and we have not always been very good friends,

but I think she will give you a home. She is the Superior of a

convent near Liége, and that English gentleman--the doctor, you

know--will take you to her; do you understand?"

"Yes, papa."

"Well, you must stay with her for the present. It is not just

what I could have wished for you, _ma petite_, but I have no

choice, as it happens; and if ever you are dull or unhappy

there, you will not blame me, or think I was unkind in sending

you, will you, my child? for indeed I could not help it, and

you will be a good little girl, I know. By-and-by, as I said,

perhaps you will marry--I cannot arrange all these matters

beforehand. I used to think sometimes that perhaps you might

have come out on the stage a few years hence. Would you have

liked that, Madelon?"

"Yes--no--oh, I don't know, papa--I want you--I want you!"

"Yes--you will want me, _pauvre petite_. Good Heavens! that a

child so small, so young should be left without me to take

care of her! Bah, I must not think of it. Madelon, there is

one thing more you must promise me--never to become a nun."

"A nun, papa?"

"Yes, a nun," he repeated, in his feeble vehement way, "a nun

like your aunt Thérèse. Do you know what it means? To grow

pious, and narrow-minded, and sour, to live for ever shut up

between four walls from which there is no escape, to think

yourself better than all the world. Madelon, promise me never

to become a nun; if I thought that were the future in store

for you--promise me, I say."

"I promise, papa," she said, quite solemnly, putting her hands

together with a quaint little gesture; "indeed I should not

like it at all."

"If I could only foresee--if I could only arrange," he said

piteously. "God knows I have done what I think is best for

you, my child, and yet--who knows what may come of it?

Madelon," he went on in a faint, pleading, broken voice, "you

will not let them make you think ill of me, and blame and

despise me when I am dead? They will try perhaps, but you must

always love me, my darling, as you do now; it must not be all

in vain--all that I have been striving for--ah, don't cry--there--

we won't talk any more now--another time."

There was a minute's silence in the darkening twilight;

Madelon's face was hidden in her father's shoulder, as he lay

there with his arm still round her and his eyes closed, faint

and exhausted. All of a sudden he roused himself with a start.

"Ah, I am dying!" he cried, with a hoarse voice, "and it is

all dark! Light the candles, Madelon--light them quickly, I

must see you once more before I die!"

Startled, awe-struck, only half realizing the meaning of his

words, Madelon slid off the bed and prepared to obey. At that

moment there came a tremendous knocking at the door of the

room, and a voice half chanting, half shouting,--

"Are you here, my friend? Are you within to-night? Can one

enter? Open quick; it is I, it is your friend! Are you ready

for your little revenge? I am ready, for my part; I will give

it to you--yes, with pleasure--yes, with an open heart!"

"It is Legros!" cried M. Linders from his bed, in a sudden

spasm of rage, "it is that villain, that _misérable!_ Yes, yes,

come in; Madelon, light the candles quickly; where are the

cards? Ah--I will have my revenge yet!"

The door burst open, and Legros entered, just as Madelon had

succeeded in lighting the candles. He stopped short in his

uproarious entrance, suddenly sobered by the appearance of M.

Linders, as he lay propped up with pillows, his white face and

bandaged head, and eyes gleaming with fever and rage.

"Papa is very ill," says Madelon. "Monsieur, do not stay to-

night, I beg of you!"

"What are you saying, Madelon?" cried her father; "I forbid

you to say that again; bring me the cards. Legros, I am ready

for you; ah, there is then one more chance in life!"

"You are not fit to play, Monsieur," said the young man,

stepping back; "I will come again to-morrow."

"To-morrow!" answered M. Linders, with a sort of laugh, "have

you then so many to-morrows that you can talk of them

recklessly? Well, then, I will tell you--I have not--not one;

but I have to-night, and that I will not lose. Ah! you think

to cheat me in that way? you will put me off till to-morrow?

you will say then--Ah, this M. Linders can never have his

revenge now, he is quiet enough, I can keep his money in my

pocket? You shall not say that, Monsieur; Madelon, bring the

cards, and the lights, close to me, here, I cannot see well,

it is so dark."

He seized the cards, and began to deal them out on the

coverlet with his trembling hands. Madelon placed a small

table at his side, put one candle on it, and with the other in

her hand stood close to his pillow white and motionless.

Legros slowly and reluctantly drew a chair to the bedside, and

sat down opposite. There was a moment's pause, whilst M.

Linders shifted and sorted his cards, and then, "A vous,

Monsieur," he cried, with a sort of fierce impatience; but at

the same instant his hold relaxed, the cards tumbled all in a

heap on the floor, his head fell back. Madelon screamed and

started forward, upsetting the table and the candle; Legros

sprang up. It was at that moment that the door opened, and

Graham, followed by a Soeur de Charité, entered the room.

Never, to the last day of his life, one may fancy, would

Graham forget the little scene before him, which, indeed,

always returned to his memory with an impression as vivid as

that made upon him now--the overturned table, the scattered

cards, Madelon in her white frock, her pale scared face, her

wavy hair, her great brown eyes illuminated by the candle she

still held, the terrified Legros, the ghastly look of the

dying man--he saw it all at a glance, as he entered the room he

had left so dim and silent but half an hour ago. It was to

Legros he first addressed himself in a tone of strong

indignation.

"Monsieur," he said, "you can have no business to transact

with a dying man, and your presence is not desired here. Might

I request you to leave me alone with my patient?"

"On my honour, Monsieur," cries the other, pale and

stammering; "it was no doing of mine--he would have it so."

Graham, very likely, did not hear what he said; he was already

at M. Linders' side. He raised his head, he felt his pulse and

heart.

"It is nearly over," he said to the Soeur de Charité; "will you

take the little girl into the next room?" And Madelon,

frightened and trembling, offered no resistance as the Soeur

took her by the hand and led her away.

It was as Graham said; all was nearly over. The feeble life,

that with careful tending and cherishing might have flickered

and lingered on yet a little longer, was all but quenched in

this last supreme passion and effort. M. Linders never spoke

again, and died in less than two hours, quietly at last, as

men do for the most part die, it is said.

"That poor child!" said Graham, "who will tell her?"

"I will," said the brave, cheery little Soeur Angélique, and

went.

* * * * * *

It was nearly midnight when the sad little bustle that had

been going on in the chamber of death was hushed at last, and

the Soeur de Charité prepared to depart. She had offered indeed

to stay all night, but when Graham assured her that there was

no occasion for any one to remain, as his room was just

opposite, and he should be on the watch to see that all was

quiet, she owned that she should be glad to go, as there was

much illness about, and her services might be required

elsewhere. She stood talking to Graham for a few moments

before leaving.

"That poor little one," she said, "I should like to have one

look at her, just to see that she is quiet; I don't think she

half understood, or took in, what I said to her."

"Madame Lavaux told me she was in bed," Graham answered, "but

we will see if she is asleep. Poor child, she will understand

it all soon enough."

He opened the door gently between the two rooms, and they

looked in. All was dark and silent, but they could just

distinguish a little head laid on the white pillow, and could

hear Madelon's soft, regular breathing.

"That is all right," said Graham, "we will not go in and

disturb her; she will sleep till the morning, I daresay, for

she was up almost all last night." He closed the door again as

he spoke, and so they left her.

It was true that Madelon was asleep, but she was not exactly

in bed. When the Sister had come in to tell her of her

father's death, she had found her seated on the ground close

to the door, with her hands clasped round her knees, her head

leaning against the doorway; some one had bought in some

supper on a tray, but it stood on the table untouched, though

she had eaten nothing since the morning. She did not move when

Soeur Angélique came in, but she looked up with an expression

of dumb, helpless misery that went to the Sister's heart; she

sat down beside her on the floor, put her arm round her, and

told her the sad news in her gentle, quiet tones, which had

acquired a ring of sympathy and tenderness in a thousand

mournful scenes of sorrow and despair; but, as she had said to

Horace, she hardly knew whether the child understood her, or

took in what she was saying. Madelon did not speak nor cry;

she only sat gazing at the little Sister with a look of

perplexed terror dilating her brown eyes, that never changed

as Soeur Angélique went on with her pious, gentle maxims and

consolations, which fell blankly enough we may be sure on our

small Madelon's bewildered mind; and presently, hearing

herself called, and seeing indeed that she was making no

impression with her kind little speeches, the Sister rose to

go, saying as she did so, "You will go to bed now, _chère

petite_, will you not?" and then thinking that a familiar face

and voice might perhaps have a kindlier influence than her own

just then, she added, "and I will ask Madame Lavaux to come to

you."

"No, no," cried Madelon, suddenly rousing, and starting up at

these last words. She had comprehended what the Sister had

told her well enough so far as words went, but she was too

stunned and confused to take in their full meaning; and in

truth her presence there at all had only been another

unfamiliar element in this bewildering whirl of events,

imparting an additional sense of unreality. But when she

mentioned Madame Lavaux, the name linked itself at once with

recent memories and emotions, and its accustomed association

with her every-day life made it a rallying point, as it were,

for her scattered ideas. Madame Lavaux had been cross and

unkind to her the night before; Madame had buoyed her up with

false hopes of her father's recovery only that morning;

Madelon did not want her, would not see her. She stood still

for a few minutes after the Soeur de Charité had left the room,

all her sorrows and doubts and certainties resolved for the

moment into a dull, unreasoning dread of seeing Madame Lavaux

come in; and then, suddenly fancying she heard footsteps

approaching the door, she hastily blew out her candle, and all

dressed as she was, crept under the coverlet of the bed. She

would pretend to be asleep, she thought, and then no one would

disturb her. The footsteps passed on, but presently the door

did open, and some one looked in: it was Madame Lavaux, who,

seeing that Madelon made no sign, concluded that she was

asleep, and went away softly, with a kind pity in her heart

for the desolate child. As for Madelon, the pretence of

slumber soon passed into reality, for, after lying awake for a

while listening to the low voices and rustling movements in

the next room, fatigue and her own enforced tranquillity

overcame her, and she fell sound asleep.

It must have been long past midnight when she awoke again with

a sudden feeling of fright and strangeness, for which she

could not account, but which made her spring off the bed and

listen if she could hear any one moving. All was very still;

not a sound came from the adjoining apartment; her own room

was quite dark, for the windows and outside shutters were

closed. Madelon felt scared, lonely, desolate, without knowing

why; and then, all at once, she remembered the reason. All

that the Sister had said came back with fresh meaning and

distinctness to her senses restored by sleep; and, sitting

down on the floor just where she was, she began to cry with a

low moaning, sobbing sound, as a child cries when it is sorry

and not naughty.

No one heard her, no one came near her; she was all alone, and

in a few minutes she stopped crying, half frightened at her

own voice in the silence and darkness. And then she began to

wonder if her father were still in the next room, or whether

they had taken him away anywhere; if not, he was all alone in

there, as she was in here. It would be some comfort to be with

him, she thought. Madelon knew that he was dead, but death was

an unfamiliar experience with her; and she could not perhaps

clearly separate this hour from all other hours when she had

been hurt, or sorrowful, or frightened, and had run to her

father to be comforted.

She got up, and, opening the door, stole softly into the other

room. It was not quite so dark in there: the windows and

Venetian shutters were wide open, and a lamp in the street

below gave an uncertain light, by which she could just

distinguish the gleam of the mirror, the table in the centre

of the room, and the bed, where the outline of a silent form

was vaguely defined under the white covering sheet. Madelon

had had some half-formed idea of getting on to the bed, and

nestling down by her father, as she had done only the evening

before, when he had put his arm round her, and they had talked

together; but now a chill dread crept over her--a sense of

change, of separation; she had not even the courage to raise

the sheet and look upon his face. She stood gazing for a

moment, afraid to go back into the darkness of her own room;

and then, with a sudden movement, as though urged by some

terror, she turned quickly away, and went swiftly to the open

window. She looked down into the narrow, dark street, dimly

illuminated by an occasional lamp; she looked up to the

starlit space of sky visible above the house-roofs and

chimneys, and neither above nor below did she find any

comfort; for a sudden awful realization of death had come to

her in the darkness and silence, almost too keen and terrible

for our poor little Madelon to bear--each realization, too, a

fresh shock, as with an instinctive shrinking from this new

consciousness of an intolerable weight her mind slipped away

into some more familiar channel, only to be brought rudely

back to this fact, so unfamiliar, and yet the only one for her

now, in this sudden shattering of all her small world of hopes

and joys and affections. And is it not, in truth, terrible,

this _strength_ of facts, when we are, as it were, brought face

to face with them, and held there till we recognise them? No

means of evasion, no hope of appeal from what is, in its very

nature, fixed, unalterable, irrevocable; the sin is committed,

the loved one gone, the friendship broken and dead, and for us

remains the realization in remorse, and heart-breaking, and

despair.

Which of us is strong enough to wrestle with facts such as

these? which one of us can look them long in the face and

live? In the desperate recoil, some of us find ourselves

recklessly striving to forget and ignore them, and some find a

surer refuge in facts that are stronger still than they; but

to one and all, in kindly compassion to human weakness, each

new emotion, each passing interest and trivial incident,

combines to interpose a barrier between us and the terrible

moment that overwhelmed us; and time which, in later years,

seems to drag out the slow hours and days into long ages of

dreary grief, can deal swiftly and mercifully with a little

child. Hardly had Madelon grasped the true measure of her

grievous loss, or tasted its full bitterness, when the

reaction came with a great burst of tears, and crouching down

in the corner by the window where she had spent so many hours

of the previous day, she sobbed away half the terror and awe

that were oppressing her poor little heart. Presently she

began to grow sorry for herself in a vague, half-conscious

sort of way--poor little Madelon, sitting there all alone

crying, no one to help her, no one to comfort her--then the

sobs came at longer and longer intervals as she gradually lost

consciousness of where she was, or why she was there; and with

the tears still wet on her cheek, she was nearly asleep again,

when she was roused by some one bringing a light into the

room; it was Graham, who had come to fetch something he had

left on the table, and to see that all was quiet.

Madelon was too much accustomed to late expectant vigils to be

startled; and, indeed, in her drowsy state, her first

impression was only the familiar one of a welcome arrival. "Me

voici, papa!" she cried, jumping up promptly; and then she saw

the young man coming towards her, and with a suddenly revived

consciousness of the still, white-sheeted form on the bed, she

sank down on her low seat again, the sensation of blank misery

all revived.

Graham, on his side, was not a little surprised at the small

figure that had started up to meet him; he had fancied her in

bed hours ago. He came up to where she was sitting, a most

sad, disconsolate little Madelon, all huddled together, her

hands clasped round her knees, her eyes shining through a

short wavy tangle of brown hair, all rough and disordered.

"Don't you think you would be better in bed?" says Horace, in

his kind, cheery voice.

"No," she answered abruptly; she was so miserable, so sore at

heart with the sudden disappointment, poor child, and Graham

had been the cause of it.

"But I am afraid you will be ill to-morrow if you sit there

all night," said Graham; "do you know what time it is?"

"No," she said again; and then, as he came a step nearer, she

gave a stamp on the floor, and turned her back on him. "Ah, do

leave me alone!" she cried, in a miserable little broken

voice, covering her face with her hand.

Graham saw that she was utterly wretched and worn out. He

could guess pretty well how it had all happened, and

reproached himself for not having foreseen and provided

against the chance of her waking up and finding herself alone;

and now he hardly knew what to do--to speak to her, or to urge

her any more just then, would only make matters worse. At last

he said quietly,--

"I have some writing to do, and I am going to bring it in

here; you will not mind that, I daresay?"

No answer; Horace left the room, but in a moment he returned,

sat down at the table and began to write.

A stillness which the rapid scratching of the pen upon the

paper, and the vague, ceaseless hum of the great city coming

through the open window, only seemed to render apparent;

occasionally the clang of a church clock, the sudden rattle of

wheels rising like hollow thunder and dying away into remote

distance, a far-off cry, and then a silence more profound by

contrast. Madelon, sitting in her dark corner, began to

recover herself; in truth, it was the greatest possible relief

to have Graham in the room with her, bringing light and the

warm sense of a living presence into the chill, unnatural

silence and darkness of death; and presently she began to

awake to a half-penitent consciousness that she had been

cross, rude, not at all raisonnable in fact; little by little

she shifted her position, and at length turned quite round to

look at M. le Docteur.

Monsieur le Docteur was not looking at her, nor thinking of

her apparently, for he never raised his eyes from his writing;

the candle light shone on his rough brown hair, on his

pleasant, clever face, with keen profile, well defined against

a shadowy background. Madelon sat watching him as though

fascinated; there was something in the absorbed attention he

was giving to his writing, which subdued and attracted her far

more than any words he could have spoken to her, or notice he

could have taken of her just then. He had apparently forgotten

her, this kind Monsieur le Docteur, who had evidently more

important things to think about than her and her pettish

little speeches; or she had perhaps made him angry, and he

would not take any more notice of her at all? There was a

certain amount of probability in this last idea to the self-

convicted little Madelon, that urged her to some sort of

action; she sat still for a few moments longer, then got up

and stole softly across the room to where Graham was sitting.

"I did not mean to be cross, Monsieur," she said, in her

little trembling voice, standing with her hands clasped behind

her back, and tears in her eyes. Perhaps Graham _had_ forgotten

her for the moment, for he gave a little start as he looked

round.

"I am sure you did not," he said quite earnestly, as he laid

down his pen, "but you are so tired to-night, and unhappy too;

are you not?"

"Ah, yes," she answered, with a little sob, "I am very

unhappy!"

He put his arm round her, as she stood beside him, and took

one of her little hands in his; he was so sorry for the poor

little girl, and yet he hardly knew what to say to console

her. She gave two or three more little sobs, rubbing her eyes

with her other hand to keep back the tears; presently she

looked up into his face, and said:

"Do you really think I had better go to bed?"

"Indeed I do," replied Horace, much relieved by the practical

turn her thoughts were taking; "I am really afraid you will be

ill to-morrow if you do not, and you know I must take care of

you now."

"I thought papa was all alone in here, and I was alone too,"

said Madelon, "it was so dark and lonely in my room."

"Well," said Horace, "I am going to stay in here for a little

while, and presently I will open your door, and then it will

be almost as if you were in the same room; won't that do?"

"Yes, thank you," said Madelon, who indeed was so tired that

she could hardly speak. Graham lighted a candle for her, and

opened the door leading into the inner room; she paused a

moment as she took the light; and gazed up into the kind face

looking down upon her; then she put her hand into his, and

saying, "Good-night, Monsieur," went into her own room. Graham

closed the door, and returned to his writing. That was all

that passed between them, but from that time Madelon's feeling

for Horace Graham approached adoration.

CHAPTER IV.

Madelon's Promise.

A week later, and Madelon was again, as on the day of her

father's death, standing at a long open window, looking out on

the fading glories of another evening sky. But instead of the

narrow Paris street, with its noisy rattle of vehicles, and

high white houses limiting the view of earth and heaven,

before her lay the small garden of a Liége hotel, and beyond,

the steep slope of a hill, where, mingled with trees, roof

rose above roof, to where two churches crowning the ridge,

showed their grey masses outlined against the clear pale blue.

Madelon had left Paris with Horace Graham the day before, and

they had arrived at Liége that afternoon. The young doctor,

bent on fulfilling the promise he had made to M. Linders, had

altered all his plans, remaining in Paris till his little

charge's affairs were settled, and then bringing her to Liége,

with the intention of leaving her in her aunt's hands, and

then proceeding to Switzerland for the accomplishment of as

much of his proposed tour as should still be practicable. He

willingly forfeited these days out of his brief holiday, for

he had come to regard the child so unexpectedly thrown upon

his care, with a very sincere interest, an affection not

unmixed with wonder. Madelon was not at all like any other

little girl he had ever had anything to do with, or rather--for

his experience on this point was limited--unlike his

preconceived notions of little girls in general. We, who know

what Madelon's education had been, cannot feel surprised at

her total ignorance of all sorts of elementary matters, her

perfect unconsciousness of the most ordinary modes of thought

current in the world, and of the most generally received

standards of right and wrong, combined with a detailed

experience in a variety of subjects with which children in

general have no acquaintance. But for Graham, there was much

that could only be matter for conjecture, much that he could

only learn from inference, and to him there was something at

once strange and pitiable in the simplicity with which she

talked to him of her past life, dwelling on little episodes

that only served to exhibit more and more clearly the real

character of M. Linders and his associates. Not for the world

would he have touched the child's innocent faith, or revealed

to our simple Madelon that her father was not the perfection

she dreamed him; but he began to understand better the meaning

of M. Linders' last words in his letter to his sister, and

they gained a pathetic significance and force as he learnt to

appreciate the affection that had subsisted between the father

and child, and foresaw too plainly that the time must come

when some rude shock would shatter all Madelon's early

beliefs, and desecrate, as it were, her tenderest memories.

There was something so sad in this certain retribution that

must fall upon her innocent head, as the child of such a

father, something so touching in her anomalous position, left

all friendless and lonely in the midst of such a hard,

relentless world, that Horace felt all his tenderest feelings

stirred with compassion, and he could have wished to have

shielded her for ever from what, he could not but fear, too

surely awaited her sooner or later.

What he could do, he did, and it was more than he thought.

Madelon's sudden devotion to him, of which indeed he knew and

suspected nothing, was of infinite service to her in her first

bitterness of her grief, by giving a new current to her ideas,

whilst it did away with the sense of lonely desolation that

had nearly overpowered her in that first dark hour. In her

ardent little nature there was a necessity for loving, even

stronger perhaps than for being loved, a certain enthusiasm, a

capacity for devotion that had opportunely found an object in

the time of extreme need. For a short hour it had seemed to

her as if life itself had come to an end with her father's

death; the darkness and vagueness of the future had crushed

her down, all the more that she had scarcely comprehended what

was the weight that so oppressed her--and then a moment had

changed it all; a kind word spoken, a kind face looking down

upon her, a friendly hand stretched out, and the vague terrors

had vanished. From that time Horace Graham's presence was

bliss to our Madelon; when she was unhappy, she dried her

tears if he consoled her; if he was out, she sat listening for

his returning footsteps; if he was busy, she was content to

remain for hours with her book on her knee, her chin propped

on her hands, her wistful eyes following his every movement.

Monsieur Horace, as it pleased Madelon to call him, knew

nothing of all this, we may be sure; but he was very good and

tender to the little girl, and did all he could to cheer and

console her in the sudden overpowering fits of grief that came

upon her from time to time. Finding that she liked to talk of

the past, he encouraged her to do so, being anxious, indeed,

to learn all he could of her former life, and to ascertain,

if, after all, there were indeed no friends to whom he could

apply, in the event of his mission to her Aunt Thérèse

proving, from any cause, unsuccessful. But as before, on this

point he obtained no sort of satisfaction. Madelon never got

much beyond the Florence artists, and her German countess, and

Russian princess. M. Linders, it was evident, had had no

friends beyond the acquaintance he had made at the different

places at which he had been wont to tarry from time to time;

and these, for the most part, Graham inferred to have been of

so doubtful a character that he could only rejoice for

Madelon's sake that all further chance of connection was

broken off. Madelon dwelt at great length on their last winter

at Florence; she loved Italy, she said; she liked it better

than France or Belgium, and Florence was such a beautiful

place; had Monsieur Horace ever been there? There were such

splendid churches, and palaces and galleries, with such grand

pictures and statues; the American used to take her to see

them. Papa had several friends there who knew a great deal

about pictures, who were artists indeed; she used to go to

their studios sometimes, and she liked hearing them talk. And

then there were the fêtes and processions, and the country

people in such gay dresses, and all with such a blue sky and

such bright sunshine; and then the Sundays! very often she and

papa would go out into the country to some inn where they

would breakfast and dine; ah! it had been so pleasant. "I

shall never be so happy again," sighs Madelon.

The warm, glowing, picturesque Italian life had, as we know,

forcibly seized her imagination, her eyes shone with delight

as she recalled it, and, almost involuntarily in describing

it, she made use of the soft words and phrases of the Italian

tongue, which with the ready talent she possessed for

languages, she had caught up, and spoke fluently.

"Where did you go when you left Florence?" asked Graham.

"We came north across the Alps and through Switzerland to

Baden, and then we stayed a little while at Homburg, and then

we were at Wiesbaden for six weeks: do you know Wiesbaden,

Monsieur Horace?"

"I was there once for two days," answered Graham; "were you

happy there too?"

"Ah yes, I was always happy with papa, but I like Wiesbaden

very much. It is so pretty and gay; do you remember the

Kursaal gardens? I used to walk there and listen to the band,

and sometimes we sat and had coffee at the little round

tables, and looked at all the people passing. And then in the

evening there were the balls; last summer I used sometimes to

go to them with the Russian Princess."

"And who was the Russian Princess?" Graham inquired.

"She was a Russian lady papa knew there, and she was very kind

to me; I used to walk with her, and sit by her at the tables,

and prick her cards for her; she said I brought her luck."

"Prick her cards!" cried Graham.

"Yes--don't you know? at rouge-et-noir," says Madelon in

explanation, "one has little cards to prick, and then one

remembers how many times each colour has won; otherwise one

would not know at all what to do."

"I see," said Graham; "and so your Russian Princess played at

rouge-et-noir--did she win much?"

"Yes, a great deal," cried Madelon, spreading out her hands,

"she always had _chance_ and was very rich; she wore such

beautiful toilettes at the balls; she knew a great many

gentlemen, and when I went with her they all danced with me."

And so on, _da capo_; it was always the same story, and Graham

soon found that he had reached the limits of Madelon's

experiences in that direction. As a last resource, he wrote to

her American and German friends at Florence, the most

respectable apparently of M. Linders' many doubtful

acquaintance, and indeed the only ones with whose address

Madelon could furnish him. From the old German he received a

prompt reply. The American was absent from Florence, he said

on a visit to his own country, which was to be regretted, as

it was he who had been M. Linders' friend, and who could have

given more information concerning him than it was in his power

to do. Indeed, for himself, he knew little about him; he had

spent the last winter at Florence, but his society and

associates were not such as he, the German, affected. M.

Linders had once been an artist, he believed; he had spent

much of his time in painting, but he knew nothing of his early

life. That he was a notorious gambler he was well aware, and

had heard more than one story about him that certainly placed

his character in no very favourable light; more than this he

could not say. Of Madelon he spoke with the warmest affection,

and there was a little note enclosed to her in Graham's

letter, which she placed, and carefully preserved, we may be

sure, amongst her most precious treasures.

These letters written, and M. Linders' few papers, which were

of little interest or importance, examined, Graham had

exhausted his sources of possible information, and could only

trust no obstacle would intervene to prevent his little charge

being at once received at the convent, and placed under her

aunt's guardianship and care. So, with as little delay as

possible, they had packed up, and set off on their journey:

and now, as Madelon stands at the window of the little hotel

salon, Paris lies many a league behind them, beyond the great

northern levels, across which they have been speeding for so

many hours. And behind her, too, already separated from her by

a distance more impassable than that which can be counted by

leagues, lies Madelon's old life, to which many and many a

time, with passionate outcries, perhaps, with tender

unspeakable yearnings, she will look back across an ever-

widening space, only to see it recede more hopelessly into a

remoter past.

She does not understand all this yet, however, with the new

life scarcely a week old. She is thinking of Monsieur Horace,

as she stands there looking out at the sunset sky; they have

just dined, and behind her a deft waiter is removing the

cloth; and in a minute she turns round gladly, as Monsieur

Horace himself comes into the room.

"Shall we take a walk, Madelon?" he says, "or are you too

tired?"

"I am not at all tired," Madelon answered. "I should like to

have a walk; may we go and look at the convent where Aunt

Thérèse lives? I should like to see it."

"That is a good idea," said Horace. "I will inquire

whereabouts it is, and we will go and have a look at it."

The convent, they were told, stood on the outskirts of Liége,

about a quarter of a mile outside the town, and a little off

the great highroad leading through Chaudfontaine and its

adjacent villages to Pepinster and Spa. It was at some

distance from the hotel; but Madelon repeated that she was not

at all tired, and would like a long walk, so they set off

together in the mild September evening. To their left lay the

old town with its picturesque churches, its quaint old

Bishop's palace, its tall chimneys and busy quays, and

wharves, and warehouses, stretching along the river banks; but

all this they left on one side as they went along the wide,

tree-planted boulevards, where carriages were rolling, and

lamps lighting, and people walking about in the ruddy glow;

and presently these too were passed by, and they came out on

the dusty high-road. A few scattered houses were still to

their right hand and to their left; but the city, with its

cloud of smoke, its kindling lights and ceaseless movement,

was behind them now. Of all its restless stir no sound reached

them through the soft twilight but the chime of bells from its

many towers, which rang out the evening angelus just as they

saw, standing on the summit of a gentle slope to their left, a

building with steep grey slate roofs and belfry, rising above

low white surrounding walls, and knew that they had reached

their destination.

The carriage-road up to the convent made a circuit, and swept

round to the other side of the little declivity: but in front,

separated from the highroad by a hedge, there was only the

slope of a ploughed field, with a gate at the lower end,

opening on to a narrow path that led straight through it up

the hill; and this path Graham and Madelon followed, to where

it joined a weed-grown footway skirting the outer wall of the

building. There was a garden inside apparently, for trees were

waving their topmost branches overhead, and vines, and

westeria, and Virginia creeper hung down in long, many-

coloured tangled shoots and tendrils over the angle of the

wall outside. A little beyond was a side-door, with a bench

placed beside it; and above, surmounted by a crucifix under a

little pent-house, a narrow shelf on which stood an empty bowl

and spoon, just placed there probably by some wandering

pensioner, who had come there, not in vain, to seek his

evening meal.

"Shall we sit down for a minute and rest?" said Graham.

Madelon seated herself at his side without speaking; she had

been talking fast enough, and not without cheerfulness, during

the early part of her walk; but since they had come within

sight of the convent, her chatter had died away into silence.

Perhaps she was tired, for she sat quite still now, and showed

no wish to resume the conversation. The sound of the city

chimes died away; the little bell in the belfry close by kept

up its sharp monotone for a minute longer, and then it too was

hushed; the trees whispered and rustled, the grasshoppers

chirped shrilly all around, but a great stillness seemed to

fall upon the darkling earth as the grey evening came down,

and enfolded it in its soft mists. Grey fields stretched away

on either hand, grey clouds that had been rosy-red half an

hour ago, floated overhead; only the trees looked dark against

the tender grey sky, the encircling hills of Liége against the

lingering twilight glow.

The silent influence of the hour made itself felt on these two

also, perhaps, for neither of them spoke at first; indeed,

Graham's thoughts had wandered far beyond the horizon before

him, when he was aroused by the sound of a little sob, and

turning round, he saw that Madelon was crying.

"What is it, Madelon?" he said; "are you tired? What is the

matter?"

She did not answer at once, she was struggling with her tears;

at last out came the grief.

"It--it all looks so sad, and gloomy, and _triste_," she said. "I

do not want to come here and be shut up in the convent; oh,

take me away, take me away!"

She clung to Graham as if she were to be parted from him that

moment, whilst he soothed her as best he could.

"We will go away at once if you like," he said; "I think we

did wrong to come at this time of the evening; everything

looks grey and cheerless now--you will see to-morrow how much

brighter it will all appear."

"It is not only that," said Madelon, striving to check her

sobs; "but just now, when we were sitting here, somehow I had

forgotten all about where I was, and everything; and I thought

I was out walking with papa, as I used to be, and I was

planning what we would do to-morrow--and then all at once I

remembered--and to-morrow I shall be in there, and I shall

never see him again, and you will be gone too--oh, papa, papa----"

She was shaking all over with one of her sudden bursts of

passionate crying. What could he do to console her? What could

he say to comfort her? Not much, perhaps, but then much was

not needed; only a few words commonplace enough, I daresay--but

then, as we have said, Monsieur Horace's voice and words

always had a wonderful influence with our little Madelon. How

is it, indeed, that amidst a hundred tones that fret and jar

on our ears, there is one kind voice that has power to calm

and soothe us--amid a hundred alien forms, one hand to which we

cling for help and support? Graham did not say much, and yet,

as Madelon listened, her sobs grew less violent, her tears

ceased, she began to control herself again. "Listen," said

Graham, presently, "is not that singing that we hear? I think

it must be the nuns."

Madelon raised her head and held her breath to listen; and

sure enough, from within the convent came the sound of the

voices of the nuns at their evening prayers. She listened

breathlessly, a change came over her face, a light into her

eyes, and she tightened her grasp of Graham's hand. The

melancholy voices rising and falling in unison, seemed a

pathetic, melodious interpretation of the inarticulate

harmonies of the evening hour.

"I like that," said Madelon, relaxing her hold as they ceased

at last; "do you think they sing like that every evening,

Monsieur Horace?"

"I have no doubt of it," he answered, "it is their evening

service; see, that must be the chapel where the windows are

lighted up."

"Perhaps they will let me sing too," said Madelon. "Ah, I

shall like that--I love singing so much; do you think they

will?"

"I think it very likely," said Horace; "but now, Madelon, we

must be going towards home; it is almost quite dark, and we

have a long walk before us."

Madelon was almost cheerful again now. She so readily seized

the brighter side of any prospect, that it was only when the

dark side was too forcibly presented to her that she would

consent to dwell on it; and now the sound of the nuns singing

had, unconsciously to herself, idealised the life that had

appeared so dull and cheerless when viewed in connexion with

the grey twilight, and had changed its whole aspect. When they

reached the boulevards, where the lamps were all lighted now,

and the people still walking up and down, it was she who

proposed that they should sit down on one of the benches for a

while.

"This is the last walk I shall have with you," she said, "for

such a long, long time."

"Not so very long," said Graham, "you know I am to come and

see you on my way back from Germany, and then if I can manage

it, we will have another walk together."

"That will be very nice," said Madelon; and then, after a

pause, she added, "Monsieur Horace, supposing Aunt Thérèse

says she will not have me, what shall I do then?"

This very same question had, as we know, presented itself to

Graham before now, and he had felt the full force of the

possible difficulty that had now occurred to our unthinking

Madelon for the first time.

"Indeed I do not know, Madelon," he answered, half laughing,

"but I don't think we need be afraid; your aunt is not likely

to turn you away."

"But if she did," persisted Madelon, "what should I do? Would

you take me away to live with you?"

"With me?" said Graham, smiling, "I don't think that would

quite do, Madelon; you know I am a soldiers' doctor, and have

to go where they go, and could not have you following the

regiment."

"Then you cannot come and go about as you please," said

Madelon; "I thought you always went where you liked; you are

not with the regiment now."

"No, I have a holiday just now; but that will come to an end

in two or three weeks, and then I must do as I am bid, and go

where I am told."

"And you have no home then? Ah, take me with you, Monsieur

Horace, I should like to see the world--let me go with you."

"Would you like to put on a little red coat, and shoulder a

musket and stand to be shot at?" says Graham, laughing at her.

"I hope to see more of the world than you would quite like, I

fancy, Madelon, that is, if we have any luck and get ordered

out to the Crimea."

For indeed it was just the moment of the Crimean war, and

while the events recorded in this little story were going on,

the world was all astir with the great game in which kingdoms

are staked, and a nation's destinies decided; treaties were

being torn, alliances formed, armies marching, all Europe

arming and standing at arms to prepare for the mighty

struggle, and Graham, like many another young fellow, was

watching anxiously to see whether, in the great tide rolling

eastward, some wave would not reach to where he stood, and

sweep him away to the scene of action.

Madelon had not heard much about the Crimea, and did not very

well know what Horace meant; but she understood the first part

of his speech, and she, too, laughed at this picture of

herself in a little red coat. Presently, however, she recurred

to her original question.

"If you were not marching about, would you let me come and

live with you?" she asked again.

"Indeed, I do not say that I would," said Graham, laughing,

"and I don't mean to settle down for a long time yet; I have

to make my fortune, you know."

"To make your fortune!" cries Madelon, pricking up her ears at

the sound of the words, for indeed they had a most familiar

ring in them; "why, I could do that for you," she added after

a moment's pause.

"Could you?" said Graham absently; he did not follow out her

thought in the least, and, in fact, hardly heard what she

said, for the words were suggestive to him also, and carried

with them their own train of ideas.

"Yes, and I will too," says Madelon, in one brief moment

conceiving, weighing, and forming a great resolution. "Ah, I

know how to do it--I know, and I will; I promise you, and I

always keep my promises, you know. I promised papa that I

would never become a nun, and I never will."

"Indeed, I cannot fancy you a nun at all," said Graham,

rousing himself, and getting up. "Don't you think we had

better be going back to the hotel now? It is getting quite

late."

"And when your fortune is made, may I come and live with you?"

said Madelon, without moving.

"We shall see about that afterwards," he answered, smiling,

"there is time enough to think about it, you may be sure.

Come, Madelon, we must be going."

"Ah, you do not know, and I will not tell you," said Madelon,

jumping up as she spoke.

"What do I not know?" asked Graham, taking her hand in his, as

they walked off together.

"What I will do--it is my secret, but you will see--yes, you

will see, I promise you that."

She almost danced with glee as she walked along at Graham's

side. He did not understand what she was talking about; he had

missed the first sentence that might have given him the clue,

and merely supposed that it was some childish mystery with

which she was amusing herself.

But Madelon understood full well, and her busy little brain

was full of plans and projects as she walked along. Make a

fortune! how many fortunes had she not seen made in a day--in

an hour! "Give me only ten francs, _et je ferai fortune!_" The

old speech that she had quoted years ago to Horace Graham--

though, indeed, she had no remembrance of having done so--was

familiar to her now as then. Ah! she knew how fortunes were

made, and Monsieur Horace did not--that was strange, but it was

evident to her--and she would not tell him. Her superior

knowledge on this point was a hidden treasure, for a great

ambition had suddenly fired our ten-year-old Madelon. Not only

in maturer years are great plans laid, great campaigns

imagined, great victories fought for; within the narrow walls

of many a nursery, on the green lawns of many a garden, the

mimic fort is raised, the siege-train laid, the fortress

stormed; and in many a tiny head the germs of the passions and

ambitions and virtues of later years are already working out

for themselves such paths as surrounding circumstances will

allow them to find. But Madelon's childhood had known neither

nursery nor sheltered home-garden. Her earliest experiences

had been amidst the larger ventures of life, the deeper

interests that gather round advancing years; her playground

had been the salons of the gayest watering-places in Europe,

her playthings the roulette-board and the little gold and

silver pieces that had passed so freely backwards and forwards

on the long green tables where desperate stakes were ventured,

and fortunes won and lost in a night; and it was amongst these

that she now proposed to try her own little game of

enterprise, and prepare this grand surprise for Monsieur

Horace. The idea was an inspiration to her. Her whole soul was

bound up in Horace Graham; I think she would willingly have

laid down her life for him, and have thought little of the

offering; a sort of _furore_ of gratitude and devotion possessed

her, and here at length was an opportunity for doing something

for him--something he did not know how to do for himself, great

and wise though he was, and this idea added not a little zest

to the plan, in Madelon's opinion, one may be sure. Ah, yes,

she knew what to do, she would go to the gambling-tables, as

she had seen her father and his associates go scores of times;

she would win money for him, she would make his fortune!

So Madelon schemed as she walked along by Graham's side,

whilst he, for his part, had already forgotten her little

speech, if indeed he had ever heard it.

So it is often--a few careless words between two people,

quickly spoken, soon forgotten, by at least one of them--and

yet, perhaps, destined to alter the course of two lives.

Before they had reached the hotel Madelon had arranged not

only the outline, but the details of her scheme. Spa was, as

she well knew, but a short distance from Liége; she would at

once beg her aunt to allow her to go over there for a day, or

two days, if one were not enough, and then--why, once there,

everything would be easy, and perhaps, even before Monsieur

Horace came back from Germany, as he had said he would, all

might be done, the promise redeemed, the fortune made! A most

childish and childlike plan, founded so entirely on deductions

drawn from experiences in the past, so wholly without

reference to the probabilities of the future, and yet not the

less the result of a fixed resolution in Madelon's mind, which

no subsequent change in the mere details of carrying it out

could affect. For, in her small undeveloped character lay

latent an integrity and strength of will, a tenacity of

purpose, which were already beginning to work, unconsciously,

and by instinct as it were, for she could assuredly never have

learnt from her father, who regarded honesty and integrity as

merely inconvenient weaknesses incidental to human nature

under certain conditions. But to Madelon they were precisely

those sacred truths which lie hidden in our inmost hearts, and

which, when once revealed to us, we cling to as our most

steadfast law, and which to deny were to denounce our best and

purest self. Not to every one are the same truths revealed

with the same force; for the most part it is only through a

searching experience that we can come clearly to understand

one or another, which is to our neighbour as his most unerring

instinct; and such must have been this integrity of purpose in

Madelon, who, in affirming that she always kept her promises,

had uttered no idle vaunt, nor even the proved result of such

experience as her short life had afforded, but had simply

given expression to what she instinctively knew to be the

strongest truth in her nature.

That evening, after Madelon had gone up to bed, she stood long

at her open window looking out into the night. Her bedroom was

high up in the hotel, and overlooked a large public place;

just opposite was a big, lighted theatre, and from where she

stood she could catch the sound of the music, and could fancy

the bright interior, the gay dresses, the balcony, the great

chandeliers, the actors, the stage. It was her farewell for

many a long day to the scenes and pleasures of her past life,

but she did not know it. The sound of the music stirred within

her a sort of vague excitement, an indefinite longing, and she

was busy peopling the future--a child's future, it is true, not

extending beyond two or three weeks, but yet sufficient to

make her forget the past for the moment. She must have stood

there for nearly an hour; any one looking up might have

wondered to see the little head popped out of window, the

little figure so still and motionless. Up above the stars

twinkled unheeded; down below other stars seemed to be dancing

across the wide Place, but they were only the lamps of the

carriages as they drove to and fro from the theatre. And

yonder, on the outskirts of this busy town, with its lights

and crowds and gay bustle, sleeping under the silent, slow-

moving constellations, surrounded by the dark rustling trees,

stands the still convent, where a narrow room awaits this

dreaming eager little watcher. Our poor little Madelon! Not

more difference between this gay, familiar music to which all

her life has been set hitherto, and the melancholy chant of

the nuns, whose echoes have already passed from her memory,

than between the future she is picturing to herself and the

one preparing for her--but she does not know it.

CHAPTER V.

Mademoiselle Linders.

Immediately after breakfast the next morning Graham once more

started for the convent, this time, however, leaving Madelon

at the hotel. He had written from Paris to the Superior

immediately after her brother's death, but had received no

reply. M. Linders' letter he had kept by him to deliver in

person when he should have reached Liége.

Madelon was watching for his return, and ran to meet him with

a most eager face.

"Have you seen my aunt?" she said. "Am I to go?"

"Yes, you are to go, Madelon," he said, looking down on her,

and taking her hands in his. "I have seen your aunt, and we

have agreed that it is best I should take you there this

afternoon."

He sat down and gave her some little account of the interview

he had had with her father's sister; not the whole, however,

for he said nothing of his own feeling of disappointment in

the turn that it had taken, nor of the compassion that he felt

for his little charge.

The fact of M. Linders having quarrelled with his sister had,

on the whole, tended to prejudice the latter in his favour

rather than otherwise, for M. Linders unfortunately seemed to

have had a talent for quarrelling with every respectable

friend and relation that he possessed; and it was with a

strong hope of finding a good and kind guardian for Madelon in

her aunt, that he had started for the convent. He wrote a few

words of explanation on his card, and this, with M. Linders'

letter, he sent in to the Lady Superior, and in return was

requested to wait in the parlour till she should come to him.

A key was handed to him, and he let himself into a large,

square room, furnished with a table, a piano, and some straw

chairs; a wooden grating shut off one end, within which were

another table and more chairs; one or two prints of sacred

subjects were on the walls, two large windows high up showed

the tops of green trees in a sunny inner courtyard,--Graham had

time to take in all these details before a door on the other

side of the grating opened and the Lady Superior appeared.

Mademoiselle Linders had doubtless displayed a wise judgment

in her choice of life; she could never under any circumstances

have shone in society, but there was something imposing in her

tall figure in its straight black draperies, and the ease and

dignity to which she could never have attained in a Paris

salon, she had acquired without difficulty in her convent

parlour. She had worked hard to obtain her present position,

and she filled it with a certain propriety of air and

demeanour. But her features were harsh, and her thin, worn

face, so far as could be distinguished beneath the half-

concealing black veil, wore a stern, discontented expression.

Somehow, Graham already felt very sorry for little Madelon, as

holding M. Linders' letter in one hand, the Superior

approached the grating, and sitting down on the inner side,

invited him by action, rather than words, to resume his chair

on the other.

"If I am not mistaken, Monsieur," she began in a constrained,

formal voice, "it was from you that I received a letter last

week, announcing my brother's death?" Graham bowed.

"I thought it unnecessary to answer it," continued the

Superior, "as you stated that you proposed coming to Liége

almost immediately. If I understand rightly, you attended my

brother in his last illness?"

"I did, Madame--it was a short one, as you are aware----"

"Yes, yes, an accident--I understood as much from your letter,"

says Madame, dismissing that part of the subject with a wave

of her hand; "and the little girl?"

"She is here--in Liége that is--we arrived last night."

"In this letter," says the Superior, slowly unfolding the

paper, "with the contents of which you are doubtless

acquainted, Monsieur----"

"I wrote it at M. Linders' dictation, Madame."

"Ah, exactly--in this letter then, I see that my brother wishes

me to take charge of his child. I confess that, after all that

has passed between us, I am at a loss to imagine on what

grounds he can found such a request."

"But--pardon me, Madame--" said Graham, "as your brother's only

surviving relative--so at least I understood him to say--you

surely become the natural guardian of his child."

"My brother and I renounced each other, and parted years ago,

Monsieur; were you at all intimate with him?"

"Not in the least," replied Graham; "I knew nothing, or next

to nothing, of him, till I attended him in his last illness;

it was by the merest accident that I became, in any way, mixed

up in his affairs."

"Then you are probably unaware of the character he bore,"

Thérèse Linders said, suddenly exchanging her air of cold

constraint for a voice and manner expressive of the bitterest

scorn; "he was a gambler by profession, a man of the most

reckless and dissipated life; he plunged by choice into the

lowest society he could find; he broke his mother's heart

before he was one-and-twenty; he neglected, and all but

deserted his wife; he ruined the lives of all who came in his

way--he was a man without principle or feeling, without

affection for any living being."

"Pardon me, Madame," Graham said again, "he was devotedly

attached to his little daughter, and--and he is dead; to the

dead much may surely be forgiven," for indeed at that moment

his sympathies were rather with the man by whose death-bed he

had watched than with the bitter woman before him.

"There is no question of forgiveness here," says Madame the

Superior, with a slight change of manner; "I bear my brother

no malice; it was not I that he injured, though he would

doubtless have done so had it been in his power. In separating

myself from him, I felt that I was only doing my duty; but I

have kept myself informed as to his career, and had I seen

many change or hope of amendment, I might have made some steps

towards reconciliation."

"And that step, Madame," Graham ventured to say, "was taken by

your brother on his death-bed----"

"Are you alluding to this letter, Monsieur?" she inquired,

crushing it in her hand as she spoke, "you have forgotten its

contents strangely, if you imagine that I consider that as a

step towards reconciliation. My brother expresses no wish of

the kind; he was no hypocrite at least, and he says with

sufficient plainness, that he only turns to me as a last

resource."

And, in fact, the letter was, as we know, couched in no very

pleasant or conciliatory terms, and Graham was silenced for

the moment. At last, ----

"He appeals to your mother's memory on behalf of his child,"

he said.

"He does well to allude to our mother!" cried the Superior.

"Yes, I recognise him here. He does well to speak of her, when

he knows that he broke her heart. She adored him, Monsieur. He

was her one thought in life, when there were others who--who

perhaps--but all that signifies little now. But in appealing to

my mother's memory he suggests the strongest reason why, even

now that he is dead, I should refuse to be reconciled to his

memory."

Graham was confounded by her vehemence. What argument had he

to oppose to this torrent of bitter words? Or how reason with

such a woman as this--one with a show of right, too, on her

side, as he was bound to own? He did not attempt it, but gave

up the point at once, turning to a more practical

consideration.

"If you are not disposed to take charge of your little niece,

Madame," he said, "can you at least suggest any one in whose

care she can be left? I promised her father to place her in

your hands, but you must see it is impossible for me to take

any further responsibility on myself. Even if I had the will,

I have not at present the power."

"I never said I would not take charge of my niece, Monsieur,"

said the Superior.

And to what end then, wonders Graham, this grand tirade, this

fine display of what to him could not but appear very like

hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness? To what end indeed?

And yet, perhaps, not wholly unnatural. After five-and-twenty

years of convent life, Thérèse Linders still clung to the

memory of the closing scenes of her worldly career, as the

most eventful in the dead level of a grey monotonous life,

still held to the remembrance of her mother's death, and of

her fierce quarrel with her brother, as the period when all

her keenest emotions had been most actively called into play.

And indeed what memories are so precious to us, which, in our

profound egotism, do we cherish so closely, as those of the

times which stirred our strongest passions to their depth, and

which, gathering up, as it were, all lesser experiences into

one supreme moment, revealed to us the intensest life of which

we are capable? There are women who would willingly barter

months of placid existence for one such moment, though it be a

bitter one; and though Mademoiselle Linders was not one of

these, or she would never have discovered that her vocation

lay within the walls of a convent, she was, nevertheless, a

woman capable of strong feelings, of vehement passions; and

these had, perhaps, found their widest scope in the love,

though it had been a wayward one, that she had felt for her

mother, and in her intense jealousy of her brother. For a

quarter of a century these passions had lain dormant, crushed

beneath the slow routine of daily duties; but these, in their

unvarying monotony, had, on the other hand, made that lapse of

years appear but as a few weeks, and kept the memory of those

stormy scenes fresher than that of the events that, one by

one, had crept into the convent life, and slowly modified its

dull course. The news of her brother's death had affected her

but little; but the sight of the familiar handwriting, the

very framing of the sentences and choice of words, which had

seemed to her like a fresh challenge even from his grave, had

revived a thousand passions, jealousies, enmities, which one

might have thought dead and buried for ever. What ghosts from

old years that Graham could not see, what memories from her

childhood and girlhood, what shadows from the old Paris life,

were thronging round Thérèse Linders, as with changed name and

dress she sat there in her convent parlour! Old familiar forms

flitting to and fro, old voices ringing in her ears, her

brother young, handsome, and indulged, herself plain,

unprepossessing, neglected, and a mother whom she had held to

and watched till the last, yet turning from her to the son who

had scorned her wishes and broken her heart. It had all

happened twenty-five years ago, but to the Superior it seemed

but as yesterday. The old hatred blazed up again, in the form,

as it doubtless appeared to her, of an anger righteous even

against the dead. Nor was the revival without its charms, with

all its old associations of strife and antagonism--like a

breeze blowing freshly from the outer world, and suddenly

stirring the slow, creeping current of her daily life.

"I never said I would not take charge of my niece," she said;

"on the contrary, I have every intention of so doing. I only

wish to make it clearly understood that my brother had no sort

of claim upon me, and that I consider every line of this

letter an insult."

"His child, at least, is innocent," began Graham.

"I am not likely to hold her responsible for her father's

misdeeds," says Madame, drawing herself up. "I repeat that I

am willing to receive my niece at once, though I cannot

suppose that with the education and training she has received,

she is likely to be anything but a burden and a care; however,

that can be looked to and corrected!"

"Indeed you will find her a most innocent and loveable child,"

pleaded Graham eagerly, and not without an inward dismay at

the idea of our little unconscious Madelon being looked to,

and corrected by this grim woman; "she thinks her father was

perfection, it is true, but it is through her total want of

comprehension of his real character, and of the nature of his

pursuits; and--believe me, Madame, it would be cruel to disturb

that ignorance."

"She has nothing to fear from me in that respect," said the

Superior coldly; "my brother might have spared the threats

with which he insults me; his child will never hear his name

mentioned by me. From the time she enters this house her past

life is at an end; she must lean to forget it, and prepare for

the future she will spend here."

"Not as a nun!" cried Graham involuntarily.

"And why not as a nun, Monsieur?"

"It was her father's last wish, his dying request that she

should never become a nun: it was the fear of some such design

on your part that made him hesitate about sending her to you,

Madame. You must surely understand from his letter how anxious

he is on that point."

"I see that he proposes an alternative that I cannot

contemplate for a moment; it is not to train actresses that we

receive pupils at the convent, Monsieur; and I have too much

regard for my niece's welfare not to prepare her for that life

which on earth is the most peaceful and blessed, and which

will win for its followers so rich a reward hereafter. But

pardon me--I cannot expect you to agree with me on this point,

and it is one that it is useless for us to discuss."

She rose as she spoke, and Graham rose also; there was nothing

more to be said.

"Then it only remains for me to bring Madelon here," he said,

"and hand over to you the sum of money which M. Linders left

for her use."

"That is all," replied the Superior; "if you can bring her

this afternoon I shall be ready to receive her. You must

accept my thanks, Monsieur, for your kindness to her, and for

the trouble you have taken."

Graham, as he walked back to the hotel, was ready to vow that

nothing should induce him to hand Madelon over to the care of

her grim aunt. He understood now M. Linders' reluctance to

send her to his sister, and sympathised with it fully. Poor

little Madelon, with her pretty, impulsive ways, her naïve

ignorance,--Madelon, so used to be petted and indulged, she to

be shut up within those dull walls, with that horrible, harsh,

unforgiving woman, to be taught, and drilled, and turned into

a nun--he hated to think of it! He would take her away with

him, he would hide her somewhere, he would send her to his

sister who had half a dozen children of her own to look after,

he would make his aunt adopt her--his aunt, who would as soon

have thought of adopting the Great Mogul. A thousand

impossible schemes and notions flitted through the foolish

young fellow's brain as he walked along, chafed and irritated

with his interview--all ending, as we have seen, in his coming

into the hotel and telling Madelon she was to go to the

convent that very afternoon. One thing indeed he determined

upon, that against her own will she should never become a nun,

if it were in his power to prevent it. He had promised her

father not to lose sight of her, and, as far as he was able,

he would keep his engagement.

He did not witness the meeting between his little charge and

her aunt. He bade farewell to a tearful, half-frightened

little Madelon at the door of the parlour, he saw it close

upon her, and it was with quite a heavy heart that he turned

away, leaving behind him the little girl who had occupied so

large a share of his thoughts and anxieties during the last

ten days. He had nothing to detain him in Liége now, and he

left it the next morning, with the intention of carrying out

as much of his proposed tour as he should find practicable.

His original intention had been to proceed from Paris to

Strasbourg, and so into Switzerland, and over the Alps to the

Italian lakes. So much of his holiday was already gone,

however, that he gave up the idea of the lakes; but

Switzerland might still be accomplished, and Strasbourg at any

rate must be in his first point, as it was there that, on

leaving England, he had directed his letters to be sent in the

first instance, and he expected to find them lying awaiting

them.

He did find them, and their contents were such as to drive all

thoughts of his tour out of his head. It was with a wild throb

of excitement and exultation, such as he had never known

before, that, on opening the first that came to hand, one that

had been lying there for nearly a week, he read that the

regiment to which he was attached was under immediate orders

for the Crimea, and that he must return, without loss of time,

to England. Even then, however, he did not forget little

Madelon. He knew that she would be counting on his promised

return, and could not bear the idea of going away without

seeing her again, and wishing her good-bye. He calculated that

he had still half a day to spare, and, notwithstanding his

hurry, resolved to return by Brussels rather than Paris,

choosing those trains that would allow him to spend a couple

of hours in Liége, and pay a visit to the convent.

It was only three days since he had last seen the white walls

and grey roofs that were growing quite familiar to him now,

and yet how life seemed to have changed its whole aspect to

him--and not to him only, perhaps, but to somebody else too,

who within those walls had been spending three of the saddest,

dreariest days her small life had ever known.

When Graham asked for Madelon, he was shown, not into the

parlour, but into a corridor leading to it from the outer

door; straw chairs were placed here also, on either side of

the grating that divided it down the middle, and on the inner

side was a window looking into another and smaller courtyard.

As Graham sat there waiting, an inner door opened and a number

of children came trooping out; they were the _externes_,

children of the bourgeois class for the most part, who came to

school twice a-day at the convent; indeed they were the only

pupils, the building not being large enough to accommodate

boarders.

The children, laughing and chattering, vanished through the

front door to disperse to their different homes, and then, in

a minute, the inner door opened again, and a small figure

appeared; a nun followed, but she remained in the background,

whilst Madelon came forward with a look of eager expectation

on the mignonne face that seemed to have grown thinner and

paler since Graham had last seen it only three days ago. His

return, so much sooner than she had expected, had filled her

with a sudden joy, and raised in her a vague hope, that she

stood sadly in need of just then, poor child!

"So you see I have come back sooner than I expected, Madelon,"

said Graham, taking the little hands that were stretched out

to him so eagerly through the grating, "but I don't know what

you will say to me, for I shall not have time for the walk I

promised you, when I thought I should stay two or three days

in Liége. I must go away this afternoon, but I was determined

not to leave without wishing you good-bye."

"Go away this afternoon!" faltered Madelon, "then you are

going away quite--and I shall never see you again!"

"Yes, yes, some day, I hope," said Horace; "why, you don't

think I am going to forget you? My poor little Madelon, I am

sorry to have startled you, but I will explain how it is," and

then he told her how there was a great war going on, and he

had been called away to join his regiment which was ordered

out to the Crimea; "you know," he said smiling at her, "I told

you it would never do for you to come marching about with me,

and running the chance of being shot at."

He tried to speak cheerfully, but indeed it was not easy with

that sad little face before him. Madelon did not answer; she

only leant her head against the wooden bars of the grating,

and sobbed in the most miserable, heart-broken way. It made

Graham quite unhappy to see her.

"Don't cry so, Madelon," he kept on saying, almost as much

distressed as she was, "I cannot bear to see you cry." And

indeed he could not, for the kind-hearted young fellow had a

theory that children and dogs and birds and all such

irresponsible creatures should be happy as the day is long,

and there seemed something too grievous in this overpowering

distress in little Madelon. She checked herself a little

presently, however, drawing back one hand to wipe away her

tears, while she clung to him tightly with the other. He began

to talk to her again as soon as she was able to listen, saying

everything he could to cheer and encourage her, telling her

what he was going to do, and how he would write to her, and

she must write to him, and tell him all about herself, and how

she must be a good little girl, and study very hard, and learn

all sorts of things, and how he would certainly come back some

day and see her.

"When?" asks Madelon.

"Ah, that I cannot tell you, but before very long I hope, and

meantime you must make haste and grow tall--let me see how tall

shall I expect you to be? as tall as that----" touching one of

the bars above her head.

She tried to smile as she answered, "It would take me a long

time to grow as tall as that."

"Not if you make haste and try very hard," he said; "and by

that time you will have learnt such a number of things, music,

and geography, and sewing, and--what is it little girls learn?"

So he went on talking; but she scarcely answered him, only

held his hands tighter and tighter, as if she was afraid he

would escape from her. Something seemed to have gone from her

in these last few days, something of energy, and spirit, and

hopefulness; Horace had never seen her so utterly forlorn and

downcast before, not even on the night of her father's death.

At last he looked at his watch. "I must go, Madelon," he said,

"I have to catch the train."

"No, no, don't go!" she cried, suddenly starting from her

desponding attitude, "don't go and leave me, I cannot stay

here--I cannot--don't go!"

She was holding him so tightly that he could not move, her

eyes fixed on his face with an intensity of pleading. He was

almost sorry that he had come at all.

"My poor little Madelon," he said, "I must go--I must, you

know--there--there, good-bye, good-bye."

He squeezed the little hands that were clinging so desperately

to him, again and again, and then tried gently to unloose

them; suddenly she relaxed her hold, and flung herself away

from him. Graham hastened away without another word, but as he

reached the door he turned round for one more look. Madelon

had thrown herself down upon the low window-seat, her face

buried in her folded arms, her frame shaking with sobs; the

nun had come forward and was trying to comfort her--the bare

grey walls, the black dresses, the despairing little figure

crouching there, and outside the courtyard all aglow in the

afternoon sunshine, with pigeons whirring and perching on the

sloping roofs, spreading their wings against the blue sky--it

was a little picture that long lived in Graham's memory. Poor

little Madelon!

CHAPTER VI.

In the Convent.

Not till Monsieur Horace was indeed gone, and there was no

longer any hope of seeing him return, not till the last door

was closed between them, the last link broken with the outer

world, not till then perhaps did our little Madelon begin to

comprehend the change that one brief fortnight had worked in

her whole life. Till now, she had scarcely felt the full

bitterness of her father's death, or understood that the old,

happy, bright, beautiful life was at an end for ever. These

last days had been so full of excitement, she had been so

hurried from one new sensation to another, that she had not

had time to occupy herself exclusively with this great sorrow

that had fallen upon her; but there was nothing to distract

her now. Her father's death, which she had found so hard to

understand in the midst of everyday life and familiar

associations, she realized all too bitterly when such

realization was aided by the blank convent walls and the dull

convent routine; the sorrow that had been diverted for a

moment by another strong predominant feeling, returned with

overwhelming force when on every side she saw none but strange

faces, heard none but unfamiliar voices; liberty, and joy, and

affection seemed suddenly to have taken to themselves wings

and deserted her, and she was left alone with her desolation.

The child was half-crazed in these first days in the extremity

of her grief; the nuns tried to console her, but she was at

first beyond consolation. She did not know what to do with her

sense of misery, her hopeless yearning, with the sudden

darkness which had fallen upon her bright life, and where she

was left to grope without one hand stretched out by which she

could reach back as it were, into the past, and grasp some

familiar reality that should help her to a comprehension of

this strange new world in which she found herself. We hear

often enough of the short life of childish troubles, quickly

excited, and as quickly forgotten--true enough perhaps of the

griefs isolated, so to speak, in the midst of long days of

happiness. But the grief that is not isolated? The grief over

which the child cries itself to sleep every night, and which

wakes with it in the morning, saddening and darkening with its

own gloom the day which ought to be so joyous? In such a grief

as this, there is, perhaps, for the time it lasts, no sorrow

so sad, so acute, so hopeless, as a child's. For us, who with

our wide experience have lived through so much, and must

expect to live through so much more, a strength has risen up

out of our very extremity, as we have learnt to believe in a

beyond, in a future that must succeed the darkest hour. But a

child, as a rule, has neither past nor future; it lives in the

present. The past lies behind, already half forgotten in to-

day's happiness or trouble; the future is utterly wide, vague,

and impracticable, in nowise modifying or limiting the sorrow

which, to its unpractised imagination, can have no ending.

When a child has learnt to live in the past, or the future,

rather than in the present, it has learnt one of the first and

saddest of life's experiences--a lesson so hard in the

learning, so impossible to unlearn in all the years to come.

A lesson that our Madelon, too, must soon take to heart, in

the midst of such dreary distasteful surroundings, with a past

so bright to look back upon, with a future which she can fill

with any amount of day-dreams, of whatever hue she pleases--a

lesson therefore, which she is not long in acquiring, but with

the too usual result, a most weary impatience of the present.

The first violence of her grief exhausted itself in time, as

was only natural, and something of her old energy and spirit

began to show itself again; but the change was not much for

the better. She did not mope nor pine, that was not her way;

but she became possessed with a spirit of restless petulance,

which at first, indeed, was only another phase of unhappiness,

but which, not being recognized as such, presently developed

into a most decided wilfulness. She turned impatiently from

the nun's well-meant kindness and efforts to console her,

which somehow were not what she wanted--not that, but something

so different, poor child!--she was cross, peevish, fractious

without intending it, scarcely knowing why; the nuns set her

down as a perverse unamiable child: and so it happened, that

she had not been many weeks in the convent before she came to

be regarded with general disfavour and indifference instead of

with the kindly feeling that had at first been shown to the

forlorn little stranger.

Graham had indeed wasted some pity on her, in imagining her

under the immediate control of her aunt. The Superior had far

too many things to think about for her to trouble herself with

any direct superintendence of her little niece; Madelon hardly

ever saw her, and in fact, of the convent life in general she

knew but little. Her lessons she soon began to do with the

other children in the class, and for the rest she was placed

under the special care of one of the younger Sisters, Soeur

Lucie by name.

Like Madelon, Soeur Lucie had been brought, a little ten-year-

old orphan to the convent, to be under the care of one of the

nuns who was her aunt; and it was, perhaps, on this account,

that she was chosen by Mademoiselle Linders as a sort of

_gouvernante_ for her niece. But there was no other resemblance

between this placid, fair-haired, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked

Flemish girl, whose early recollections were all of farms and

farmyards, of flat grassy meadows watered by slow moving

streams, of red cows feeding tranquilly in rich pastures, of

milking, and cheese-making, and butter-making, of dairies with

shining pots and pans and spotless floors, and our vehement

brown-eyed Madelon, who in her ten years had seen more of the

world than Soeur Lucie was likely to see if she lived to be a

hundred. Soeur Lucie had passed a happy, peaceful childhood in

the convent, and, as she grew up into girlhood, had listened

submissively to the words of exhortation which urged her to

give up the world and its vanities, which she had never known,

and by such voluntary renunciation to pass from a state of

mere negative virtue into that one of superior holiness only

to be attained beneath the nun's veil, and behind the convent

grating. She took the vows as soon as she was old enough,

endowed the convent with her fortune, and was perfectly happy.

She had neither friends nor relations outside this little

world in which she had been brought up, and she desired

nothing beyond what it could afford her. She had, as she well

knew, secured for herself in the next world a sure

compensation for any little sacrifices she might have made in

this--a reflection that often consoled her under a too

prolonged course of prayer and meditation, for which, to say

the truth, she had little aptitude--and for the rest, she was

universally allowed to be the best compote-maker (the nuns

were famous for their compotes, which were in great demand),

the best embroiderer, the best altar-decorator in the convent.

What more could be expected or demanded of life? Soeur Lucie,

at any rate, was quite satisfied with her position, and this

perfectly simple-minded, good-tempered little sister was a

general favourite. Madelon could not have fallen into kinder

hands; Soeur Lucie, if not always very wise, was at least very

good-natured, and if she did not win much respect or

admiration from our little Madelon, who was not long in

discovering that she knew a great deal about a great many

things that the nun had never heard or dreamt of, the poor

child at least learnt to recognize hers as a friendly face,

and to turn to her in these dreary days.

The convent was neither very large nor very wealthy. The

building itself had formerly been a château-farm, which, with

its sheds and outlying buildings, had, many years ago, been

converted with considerable alterations into its present form;

rooms had been partitioned off, a little chapel had been

built, the hall turned into a refectory, the farmyard and

orchard into a pleasant sunny garden with lawn, and flower-

beds, and shrubs, with vines and fruit-trees alternating with

creepers along the old walls. As for the sisters, few were

from the upper ranks of society, belonging for the most part,

rather to the middle and bourgeois class. Mademoiselle Linders

had gained her present position not less by her superior birth

and education, than by that to which she would more willingly

have attributed her elevation--a certain asceticism of life

which she affected, an extra observance of fasts and vigils,

which the good nuns looked upon with reverence, without caring

to emulate such peculiar sanctity in their own persons. The

rule was not a strict one, nor, though the Superior was

careful to enforce it to its utmost rigour, was the life one

of particular hardship or privation. They were a simple, kind,

good-hearted set, these Sisters, having their little disputes,

and contentions, and jealousies among themselves occasionally,

no doubt, but leading good, peaceable lives on the whole, with

each day and hour well filled with its appointed tasks,

leading through a continual, not useless round of embroidery,

teaching, compote-making, and prayers.

Perhaps some one looking round on them, with their honest,

homely Belgian faces, would have tried to imagine some history

for them, in accordance with the traditions that cling about

convent walls, and associate themselves with the very mention

of a nun; and most likely they would have been all wrong. None

of these Sisters had had very eventful lives, and they had,

for the most part, dropped into their present mode of

existence quite naturally. With little romance to look back

upon, save such as finds a place in even the homeliest life,

with an imperfect middle-class education that had failed to

elevate the mind, or give it wide conceptions of life, and

religion, and duty, a certain satisfaction at having done with

secular life and its cares, and at having their future here

and hereafter comfortably provided for, was perhaps the

general tone amongst this prosaic, unimaginative community. We

are, indeed, far from affirming that in that little society

there was no higher tone of religious enthusiasm, that there

were not some who not only found their highest religious ideal

in the life they had chosen, but to whom it formed, in fact,

the highest ideal to which they could attain, and calculated,

therefore, to develope in them the best and noblest part of

their natures. To such, the appointed, monotonous round, the

unquestioning submission to the will of another, the obedience

at once voluntary and enforced, would not only bring a

gracious sense of repose after conflict, but, by satisfying

their religious cravings and aspirations, by demanding the

exercise of those virtues which appeared to them at once the

highest and the most attainable, would give peace to souls

which, in the world's active life, would have tossed for ever

to and fro in reckless unquiet warfare, nor have ever once

perceived that in such warfare they might, after all, be

fulfilling the noblest ends. "Peace, and rest, and time for

heavenly meditation," they had cried, stretching out weary

hands to this quiet little harbour of refuge, and perhaps--who

knows?--they had there found them.

Such, then, was this little world in which our Madelon

suddenly found herself placed to her utter bewilderment at

first, so alien was it to all her former experiences, so

little could she understand of its meaning, its aims, its

spirit and intention; no more than, as it seemed to her, those

around her understood her, or her wants and wishes. To her,

the convent only appeared inexpressibly _triste_ and dreary, a

round of dull tasks, enlivened by duller recreations, day

after day, for ever bounded by those blank, grey walls--no

change, no variety, no escape. The bare, scantily-furnished

rooms, the furniture itself, the food, the nuns' perpetual

black dress, and ungraceful headgear,--Madelon hated them all,

as she gradually recovered from her first desolation, and

became alive again to external impressions; and, as the first

keenness of her sorrow wore off, this vague sense of general

unhappiness and discomfort showed itself in an attitude of

opposition and defiance to every one and everything around

her. From being helplessly wretched and cross, she became

distinctly naughty, and before long our Madelon had drifted

into the hopeless position of a child always refractory,

always in disgrace, a position from which, when once assumed,

it is almost impossible for the small hapless delinquent to

struggle free.

That Madelon was very naughty cannot be denied, and the fact

surprised no one so much as herself. The nuns, accustomed to

all sorts of children of every variety of temper, of every

shade of docility and wilfulness, of cleverness and stupidity,

found nothing astonishing in one more perverse little

specimen, but Madelon could not understand it at all. She was

not used to feeling naughty, and did not know what it meant at

first. In her life hitherto, when she had been as happy as the

day is long, she had had singularly few opportunities for

exercising the privilege of every child of Adam, and

exhibiting her original waywardness. But it was far otherwise

now, and she could not understand why she always felt cross,

always obstinate, always perverse; she only knew that she was

very miserable, and it was quite a discovery to be told one

day that it was because she was naughty, and that if she were

good, she would be happy.

"I always am good," said Madelon, firing up, and speaking from

the experience of former days, "and I am not at all happy--I

never shall be here."

But alas! it was proved too clearly that she was not at all

good, and indeed she began to think so herself, only she did

not see how she could help it.

Madelon got into great disgrace in the very first weeks after

her arrival at the convent, and this was the occasion of it.

The only room vacant for her was a cell that had been occupied

by a sister who had died a short time previously, a sister of

a devout turn of mind, who had assisted her meditations by the

contemplation of a skull of unusual size and shininess. The

cell was a cheerful, narrow little room, looking out on the

convent garden, and the first pleasant sensation that Madelon

knew in the convent was when she was taken into it, and saw

the afternoon sun shining upon its white-washed walls, and the

late climbing roses nodding in at the open window; but she

became possessed with a perfect horror of the skull. She

discovered it the first evening when she was going to bed, and

was quite glad to pop her head under the bed-clothes, to shut

out all sight and thought of it. But awaking again that first

night in her grief and loneliness, she saw a stray moonbeam

shining in, and lighting it up into ghastly whiteness and

distinctness, as it stood on a little bracket against the wall

beneath a tall wooden crucifix. For the first minute she was

half paralysed with terror; she lay staring at it without

power to move, and then she would assuredly have run to some

one for protection had she known to whom to go, or, indeed,

had she not been too terrified to do more than hide her head

under the counterpane again. From that time it became a

perpetual nightmare to her. By day its terrors were less

apparent, though even then, with her innate love for all

things bright, and joyous, and pleasant, it was a positive

grief to her to have such a grim object before her eyes

whenever she came into the room; but at night no sooner was

she in bed, and the light taken away, than her imagination

conjured up a hundred frightful shapes, that all associated

themselves with the grinning death's-head. In vain she covered

it up, in vain she shut her eyes--sleeping or waking it seemed

always there. At length she could bear it no longer, and

entreated piteously that it might be taken away; but Soeur

Lucie, to whom the little prayer was made, did not view the

matter in at all the same light as Madelon. In the first

place, if formed part of the furniture of the room, and had

always been there, so far as he knew--which, to the nun, whose

life was founded on a series of unquestioned precedents,

allowing of nothing arbitrary but the will of the Superior,

appeared an unanswerable reason why it should always remain;

and, in the next place, with the lack of sympathy that one

sometimes remarks in unimaginative minds, she did not in the

least understand the terror with which it inspired the child,

but assured her, in her good-humoured way, that that was all

nonsense, and the she would get over it in time. So the skull

remained, and Madelon was miserable, till one night, in a

moment of desperation, she jumped out of bed, seized it with

both hands, and flung it with all her might through the window

into the garden below. She was frightened when she heard the

crash of falling glass, for in her excitement she had never

stopped to open the window, but greatly relieved,

notwithstanding, to think that her enemy was gone, and slept

more soundly that night than she had done for a long time

previously.

Next morning, however, Madelon had a cold, a pane of glass was

found in fragments on the gravel walk beneath the window, a

skull was discovered, lying among the long grass on the lawn;

one can fancy the exclamations, the inquiries, the commotion.

Madelon, though not a little frightened, avowed boldly enough

what she had done, and so far gained her end that the skull

never reappeared, and a safe precedent was established for

Soeur Lucie's future guidance; but she got into great trouble

at the time, and gained moreover the unenviable distinction of

having committed a deed of unparalleled audacity. After this,

what might not be expected of such a child? The nuns at once

formed a bad opinion of her, which they owed it to themselves

to confirm on the occasion of each succeeding offence, by a

reference to this past misdeed which had first taught them of

what enormities she was capable.

Matters were no better when there came to be a question of

lessons. Madelon did not mind the actual learning, though she

wearied a little of the continued application to which she was

unused; but she resented to the last degree the astonishment

that her ignorance on all sorts of subjects excited both in

the nuns who taught her, and in the other children in the

class, and which was expressed with sufficient distinctness.

"Never studied geography, nor history, nor arithmetic!" cries

Soeur Ursule, who superintended the school; "not know the

principal cities in Europe, nor the kings of France, nor even

your multiplication table!" These speeches, with strongly

implied notes of admiration after each sentence, and

illustrated by the expression on the faces of a small, open-

mouthed audience in the background, roused Madelon's most

indignant feelings; she rebelled alike against the injustice

of being held up to public reprobation for not knowing what

she had never been taught, and against the imputations cast

upon her education hitherto. "I can do a great many things you

cannot," she would answer defiantly, "I can talk English, and

German, and Italian--you can't; I can dance--you can't; I can

sing songs, and--and, oh! a great many things that you cannot

do!" A speech of this sort would bring our poor Madelon into

dire disgrace we may be sure; and then angry, impenitent, she

would go away into some corner, and cry--oh! how sadly--for her

father; for the happy old days, for Monsieur Horace, too,

perhaps, to come back, and take her out of all this misery.

Behind the convent was a strip of ground, which produced

cabbages and snails on one side, and apple-trees on the other;

a straight walk divided these useful productions from each

other. When Madelon was _en pénitence_ she used sometimes to be

sent to walk here alone during the hour of recreation, and

would wander disconsolately enough among the apple-trees,

counting the apples by way of something to do, and getting

intimately acquainted with the snails and green caterpillars

amongst the cabbages. Our poor little Madelon! I could almost

wish that we had kept her always in that pretty green valley

where we first saw her; but I suppose in every life there come

times when cabbages, or things of no cheerfuller aspect than

cabbages, are the only prospect, and this was one of her

times. She used to feel very unhappy and very lonely as she

paced up and down, thinking of the past--ah, how far that past

already lay behind her, how separate, how different from

anything she did, or saw, or heard in these dull days! She did

not find many friends to console her in her troubles; good-

natured Soeur Lucie did indeed try to comfort her when she

found her crying, and though she was not very successful in

her efforts, Madeleine began to give her almost as much

gratitude as if she had been. Soeur Lucie could not think of

anything to tell her but that she was very naughty, and must

try to be good, which Madelon knew too well already. It would

have been more to the purpose, perhaps, if she had told her

she was not so very bad after all, but Soeur Lucie never

thought of that; perhaps she did not care much about the

child; by this time Madelon was beginning to be established as

the black sheep of the little community, and Soeur Lucie only

expressed the general sense; but being very good-natured, she

said in a kind way what other people said disagreeably.

Neither from her companions did she meet with much sympathy,

and, indeed, when out of disgrace, Madelon was apt to be

rather ungracious to her schoolfellows, with whom she had

little in common. The children who came daily to the convent

were of two classes--children of the poor and children of a

higher bourgeois grade, shopkeepers for the most part. Madelon

was naturally classed with the latter of these two sets during

the lesson hours, but she stood decidedly aloof from them

afterwards, at first through shyness, and then with a sort of

wondering disdain. She had never been used to children's

society; all her life her father had been careful to keep her

apart from companions of her own age, and, accustomed to

associate continually with grown-up people, she chose to

regard with great contempt the trivial chatter, and squabbles,

and amusements of her small contemporaries. After a time,

indeed, she condescended to astonish their minds with some of

her old stories, and was gratified by the admiration of a

round-eyed, open-mouthed audience, who listened with rapt

attention as she related some of the glories of past days,

balls, and theatres, and kursaals, princes and counts, and

fine dresses; it served in some sort to maintain the sense of

superiority which was sorely tried during the untoward events

of the lesson hours; but this also was destined to come to an

end. One day there was a whispering among the listeners, which

resulted in the smallest of them saying boldly,--

"Marie-Louise says your papa must have been a very bad man."

"What!" cries Madelon, jumping off the high stool on which she

had been seated. This little scene took place during the hour

of recreation, when the children ate their luncheon of bread

and fruit.

"Ah, yes," says Marie-Louise, a broad-faced, flaxen-haired

damsel, half a head taller than Madelon, and nodding her head

knowingly. "Those are very fine stories that you tell us

there, Mademoiselle, but when I related them at home they said

it was clear your papa must have been a very wicked man."

Madelon turned quite white and walked up to the girl, her

teeth set, her small fists clenched. "You are wicked!" she

stammered out; "how dare you say such things? I--I will never

speak to you again!" and then she turned, and walked off

without another word.

The matter did not end here, however, for the children talked

of it among themselves, the nuns heard of it, and, finally, it

reached the ears of Madame la Supérieure herself. Madelon,

summoned into the awful presence of her aunt, received the

strictest orders never again to refer to these past

experiences in any way. "You are my child now," says Madame,

overwhelming the poor little culprit before her with her

severest demeanour, "and must learn to forget all these

follies." If Madelon feared any one, it was her aunt, who had

never cared to win her little niece's love by any show of

affection; the child came before her trembling, and escaped

from her gladly. She had no inclination to draw down further

reprimands by disobedience in this particular, so far as words

went, nor indeed had she any temptation to do so. From this

time she kept more apart from the rest of the children, rarely

joining in their games, and preferring even Soeur Lucie's

society to that of her small companions. So, altogether,

Madelon's first attempts at a convent life were not a success,

and time only brought other sad deficiencies to light.

Whatever the nuns may have thought or said, concerning her

ignorance of history, geography, and arithmetic, it was a far

more serious matter when there came to be a question of her

religious knowledge. The good sisters were really horrified at

the complete blank they found, and lost no time in putting her

through a course of the most orthodox instruction. Before she

had been a month in the convent, she knew almost as much as

Nanette, had learnt why people go to church and what they do

there, had studied her catechism, could find her places in her

prayer-book, could repeat Ave Marias and Paternosters, and

tell her beads like every one else. And so Madelon's questions

are answered at last, her perplexities solved, her yearnings

satisfied! She apprehended quickly all that she was taught, so

far as in her lay, and vaguely perceived something still

beyond her powers of apprehension, something that still

confusedly connected itself with the great church, with the

violinist's playing, with the pictures and the music of old

days, and which, for the present, in her new life, found its

clearest expression, not in the nuns' teaching, for, kind and

affectionate as it in truth was, it was marred from the first

to Madelon by the inevitable exclamation of wonder and horror

that she should not know all about it already--not in the

questions and answers in her catechism, nor in the religious

dogmas and formulas which she accepted, but could hardly

appreciate--not in all these, but in the little chapel with its

gaudy altars, and twinkling lights, its services, and music,

and incense. Indeed, apart from all higher considerations, the

pictures, the colouring, the singing, all were the happiest

relief to the child, who, used to perpetual change and

brightness, wearied indescribably of the dull, colourless

life, the uniform dress, the want of all artistic beauty in

the convent. Her greatest reward when she had been good was to

be allowed to join in the singing in the chapel--her greatest

punishment, to be banished from the evening services.

No need, however, to pursue this part of little Madelon's

history further. With the nuns' instruction, and the learning

of her catechism, vanished all that had distinguished her, in

this respect, from other children of her years and station.

She had learnt most of what can be learnt by such teaching,

and for her, as for others, there remained the verifying and

realization of these lessons, according to her capacity and

experience. Only, one may somehow feel sure, that to this

passionate, wilful little nature, religion would hardly

present itself as one simple sublime truth, high, pure, and

serene as the over-arching, all-embracing heaven, through

which the sun shines down on the clashing creeds of men; but

rather as a complex, many-sided problem, too often at variance

with her scheme of life, to be felt after through the medium

of conflicting emotions, to be worked out at last through what

doubts, questionings, with what perplexities, strivings,

yearnings, cries for light--along this in nowise singular path,

no need to follow our little Madelon.

For the rest, she imbibed readily enough at this time many of

the particular views of religious subjects affected by the

nuns, at first, indeed, not without a certain incredulity that

such things could be, when her father had never spoken to her

about them, nor made her aware of their existence; but

presently, with more confidence, as she remembered that he was

to have told her all about them when she was older. There were

the legends and histories of the saints, for instance, in

which Madelon learnt to take special delight, though it way be

feared that she regarded them rather as pretty romantic

stories, illustrated and glorified by her recollections of the

old pictures in Florence, than as the vehicle of religious

instruction that the nuns would willingly have made them. She

used to beg Soeur Lucie to tell them to her again and again,

and the good little nun, delighted to find at least one pious

disposition in her small rebellious charge, was always ready

to comply with her request, and went over the whole list of

saints and their lives, not sparing one miracle or miraculous

virtue we may be sure, and telling them all in her simple,

matter-of-fact language, with details drawn from her daily

life to give a touch of reality, which invested the mystic old

Eastern and Southern legends with a quaint naïve homeliness

not without its own charm--like the same subjects as

interpreted by some of the old Dutch and Flemish masters, in

contrast with the high-wrought, idealised conceptions of the

earlier Italian schools. But it was through the medium of

these last that Madelon saw them all pass before her--St.

Cecilia, St. Catherine, St. Dorothea, St. Agnes, St.

Elizabeth--she knew them all by name. Soeur Lucie almost changed

her opinion of Madelon when she discovered this--for about a

day and a half that is, till the child's next flagrant

delinquency--and Madelon found a host of recollections in

which she might safely indulge, as she chatted to Soeur Lucie

about the pictures, and galleries, and churches of Florence,

not a little pleased when the nun's exclamations and questions

revealed that she herself had never seen but two churches in

her life, that near her old home and the convent chapel.

"Oh, I have seen a great many," Madelon would say, "and

palaces too; I daresay you never saw a palace either? but I

like the churches best because of the chapels, and altars, and

tombs, and pictures. At Florence the churches were so big--oh!

as big as the whole convent--but I think the chapel here very

pretty too; will you let me help you to decorate the altar for

the next fête, if I am good?"

So she chattered on, and these were her happiest hours

perhaps. Sometimes she would be allowed to accompany Soeur

Lucie to the big kitchen, and assist in the grand compote-

making, which seemed to be going on at all seasons of the

year. There, sometimes helping, sometimes perched on her

favourite seat on the corner of the table, Madelon would

forget her sorrows for awhile in the contemplation of the old

farm-kitchen with its rough white-washed walls, decorated with

pots and pans, and shining kettles, its shelves with endless

rows of blue and white crockery, its great black rafters

crossing below the high-pitched ceiling leaving a gloomy

space, full of mystery to Madelon's imagination; and then,

below, the long white wooden table, the piles of fruit, the

busy figures of the nuns as they moved to and fro. Outside in

the courtyard the sun would be shining perhaps, the trees

would wave, and cast flickering shadows on Madelon, as she

sat, the pigeons would come fluttering and perching on the

window-sill, and Soeur Lucie, whilst paring, cutting, boiling,

skimming, would crone out for Madelon's benefit the old tales

she knew so well that she could almost have repeated them in

her sleep. Madelon only begged to be let off the tragical

ending, which she could not bear, at last always stopping her

ears when the critical moment of the sword, or the wheel, or

the fire approached. She took great interest in the history of

Ste. Thérèse, especially in the account of her running away in

her childhood, which seemed to her most worthy of imitation--

only, thinks Madelon, she would have taken care not to have

been caught, and brought back again. The subsequent history of

the saint she found less edifying; nothing that savoured of

conventual life found favour in Madelon's eyes in these days;

and indeed her whole faith in saints and legends was rudely

shaken one day by a broad and somewhat reckless assertion on

the part of Soeur Lucie, that all the female saints had been

nuns--an assertion certainly unsupported by the facts, whether

legendary or ascertained, but which had somehow become a fixed

idea in Soeur Lucie's mind, and was dear to the heart of the

little nun.

"They were not nuns like you, then," says Madelon at last,

after some combating of the point, "for they could go out, and

walk about, and do a great many things you must not do--and if

I were a saint, I would never, never become a nun!"

"But it is the nuns that have become saints," cries Soeur

Lucie, with the happiest conviction; and Madelon, unable to

argue out her own ideas on the subject, contented herself with

repeating, that anyhow they had not all been nuns like Soeur

Lucie, which was indisputable.

These were, as we have said, Madelon's happiest times, and,

indeed, they hardly repaid the child for long days of

weariness and despondency, for hours of heart-sick longing for

she knew not what, of objectless hoping, of that saddest form

of home-sickness, that knows of no home for which to pine. In

all the future there was but one point on which her mind could

rest--Monsieur Horace's promised return, and that was too

vague, too remote to afford her much comfort. And her own

promise to him, has she forgotten that? She would not have

been the Madelon that we know if she had done so, but we need

hardly say that she had not been two days in the convent,

before she instinctively perceived how futile were all those

poor little schemes with which she had been so busy the

evening before she parted with Graham, how impossible it would

be to ask or obtain her aunt's permission for going to Spa on

such an errand. The convent was to all intents and purposes a

prison to our little Madelon, and she could only wait and

cherish her purpose till a happier moment.

She heard twice from Graham in the first few months. He wrote

just before leaving England, and once from the Crimae; but

this last letter elicited an icy response from the Superior,

to the effect generally that her niece being now under her

care, and receiving the education that would fit her for the

life that would be hers for the future, she wished all old

connections and associations to be broken off; in short, that

it would be useless for Graham to write any more letters, as

Madelon would not be allowed to see them. Graham received this

letter at Balaklava, at the end of a long day's work, and

laughed out loud as he read the stiff, formal little epistle,

which, to the young man in the midst of the whirl and bustle

of camps and hospitals, seemed like a voice from another

world; there was something too ludicrous in the notion of a

child of eleven years old being forbidden to receive letters,

because she might possibly be a nun nine or ten years hence.

"As for that, we'll see about it by-and-by, old lady," he said

to himself, "but in the meantime there is no use in writing

letters that are not to be delivered;" and then he thrust

Mademoiselle Linders' letter into his pocket, and thought no

more about it.

So Madelon heard nothing more of Monsieur Horace, though she

often, often thought of him, and wondered what he was doing.

He was very busy, very hard-worked; an army-surgeon had no

sinecure in the Crimea in those days, as we know, and it was

perhaps well for the child, who cared more for him than for

any one else in the world, that she knew nothing of his life

at this time, of wintry battle-fields and hospital tents, of

camps and trenches, where, day and night, he had to fight in

his own battle with sickness, and wounds, and death. No news

from the war came to Madelon's ears, no whisper from all the

din and clamour that were filling Europe, penetrated to this

quiet, out-of-the-world, little world in which her lot was

cast. The mighty thunder of the guns before Sebastopol rolled,

echoing, to the north, and roused sunny cities basking in the

south, and stirred a million hearts in the far islands of the

west; but it died away before the vine-covered gate, the

white-washed walls of the little Belgian convent. There life

stole on at an even pace, little asked of it, yielding little

in return, and amongst that peaceful Sisterhood, one little

restless spirit, ever seeking and feeling after what she could

not find, looking in the faces of all around her, if so be

some one could help her, and, with a child's instinct,

rejecting each in turn.

END OF VOL. I.

MY LITTLE LADY.

_COPYRIGHT EDITION_.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LEIPZIG

BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ

1871.

_The Right of Translation is reserved_.

PART II.

(continued.)

MY LITTLE LADY.