"Our sainted Superior doubtless knew best," said Soeur Lucie, with a ready faith, which was capable, however, of adjusting itself to meet altered circumstances, "but we are clearing out that room below, which we think of turning into another store- room; we have not half space enough for our confitures as it is, and another large order has arrived to-day. And so, Madeleine, we had better see of there is anything in the box you wish to keep, and then it can be sent away. We shall perhaps find some clothes that can be altered for you."
"Yes," said Madelon, on whom, in spite of her new schemes and resolutions, that little sentence about sending the box away had a chilling effect; it was like cutting off another link between her and the world. Soeur Lucie went down on her knees and began to uncord the trunk.
"Here is the key tied to it," she said; "now we shall see."
She raised the lid as she spoke, but at that moment a bell began to ring.
"That is for vespers," she cried, "we must go; Madeleine, in a few days you will be able to come to the chapel again; to- night you can stay and take out these things. Ah, just as I thought—there are clothes," she added, taking a hurried peep, and then followed Soeur Marie out of the room.
Madelon approached the box with a certain awe mixed with her curiosity. It was quite true that she had never seen what it contained; she only knew that it had been her mother's, and that various articles belonging to her had been put away in it after her death. It had never been opened since, to her knowledge; her father had once told her that she might have the contents one day when she was a big girl, but that was all she knew about it.
Madelon had no very keen emotion respecting the mother she had never known; her father had spoken of her so seldom, and everything in connection with her had so completely dropped out of sight, that there had been no scope for the imaginative, shadowy adoration with which children who have early lost their mother are wont to regard her memory; her father had been everything to her, and of her mother's brother she had none but unpleasant recollections. But now, for the first time, she was brought face to face with something that had actually been her mother's, and it was with a sort of instinctive reverence that she went up to the box and took out one thing after another. There was some faint scent pervading them all, which ever afterwards associated itself in Madelon's mind with that hour in the narrow room and gathering twilight.
There was nothing apparently of the smallest value in the trunk. Any trinkets that Madame Linders might once have possessed had been parted with long before her death; and anything else that seemed likely to produce money had been sold afterwards. Here were nothing but linen clothes, which, as Soeur Lucie had hinted, might be made available for Madelon; a shawl, and a cloak of an old-fashioned pattern, a few worn English books, with the name "Magdalen Moore" written on the fly-leaf, at which Madelon looked curiously; a half-empty workbox, and two or three gowns. Amongst these was a well-worn black silk, lying almost at the bottom of the trunk; and Madelon, taking it out, unfolded it with some satisfaction at the thought of seeing it transformed into a garment for herself. As she did so, she perceived that some things had been left in the pocket. It had probably been the last gown worn by Madame Linders, and after her death, in the hurry and confusion that had attended the packing away of her things, under Monsieur Linders' superintendence, it had been put away with the rest without examination.
A cambric handkerchief was the first thing Madelon pulled out, and, as she did so, a folded paper fluttered on to the ground. She picked it up, and took it to the window to examine it. It was the fragment of a half-burned letter, a half sheet of foreign paper closely written in a small, clear hand; but only a fragment, for there was neither beginning nor ending. It was in English, but Madelon remembered enough of the language to make out the meaning, and this was what she read in the fading light.
It began abruptly thus:—