My Little Lady

by E. Frances Poynter

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.