"Let you run away, ma petite?"
"Yes—Aunt Thérèse, you know. She won't let me do it again."
"Your aunt? You told me she was dead;" cried Madame.
"Yes, so she is," said Madelon. "I was forgetting, I think.
Good-bye, Madame Bertrand. You will let me stay next time,
will you not? But I must go now?" And she followed the
Countess out of the house without another word.
Madame la Comtesse, having got her own way, was kind enough to the child who had so unwittingly strayed across her path. When they reached the station she gave her her ticket, made her sit down in the waiting-room, and even offered her refreshment in the interval before the train started. Indeed, we should err if we attributed to the Countess, whom this little episode in our Madelon's history has brought for the second, and we may trust for the last, time before us—we should err, I say, in attributing to her any feeling of ill-will towards Madelon, or any special interest in her conduct or fate. Neither need it be imagined that she was actuated by any large views of duty towards the world in general: she was not at all benevolent, but neither was she particularly ill-natured; she was merely a shallow-minded, frivolous woman, who, having long since lowered her standard of perfection to suit her own attainments, saw fit to measure every one else by her own narrow ideal, and to set them right where they proved themselves wanting—a convenient process, which enabled her to satisfy her vague sense of duty, and right and wrong, without any reference to her own possible shortcomings. In capturing our little stray Madelon, and taking her back to the convent, she felt she was doing a deed that would afford her matter for self-congratulation for days to come; and she was gracious and affable accordingly, speaking to Madelon in a tone of condescending good-nature, which was quite lost upon the child, who was beyond caring for kindness or unkindness just then. She was only conscious of some terrible burden, which she could not define nor reason upon, but which seemed to oppress and weigh her down, making her incapable of thought, or speech, or motion. When they got into the railway-carriage she could only lean back in the corner, with a general sense that something dreadful had happened, or was going to happen; but that her head ached too much, and felt too confused, for her to remember what it was all about.
They changed carriages at Pepinster, and, still in the same dream of misery, Madelon followed the Countess from one train to another. They set off again, but presently, as the slackening speed showed that they were approaching another station, she suddenly woke up to the keenest perception of her situation, with a quickening of her numbed senses to the most vivid realization of all she had lost, of all she might have to endure. Ah! it was all true, and no dream—she had run away from the convent to make Monsieur Horace's fortune; and she had not done it, and now all was over, and she was being taken back to the convent—and there would be no more chance of escape for her—never more. In the agony of this thought she turned towards the Countess, with a half-formed intention of throwing herself at her feet, and imploring, in such voice and accents as should admit of no refusal, to be allowed to go away—anyhow, anywhere, only as far as possible from Liége. But she checked herself as she saw that the Countess, with a handkerchief thrown over her face, had comfortably composed herself to sleep in one corner, and a new idea suggested itself as the train stopped at a little village station. The child glanced towards the woman; she still slept, or appeared to do so, and the next moment Madelon had opened the door, and, taking up her bundle, had slid swiftly and silently out of the carriage.
The train moved on, and a drowsy Countess might presently awake to find with astonishment that she was alone in the compartment; but our little Madelon, left standing on the platform, had slipped out of her sight and knowledge for ever.
CHAPTER XIII.
The Restaurant at Le Trooz.
The train disappeared, and our forlorn little Madelon remained standing alone on the platform. Forlorn, indeed! It was raining hard now, a thick, persistent drizzle, through which everything looked dim and blurred, and which was almost as dense as the low-hanging mists that hid the tops of the hills. Madelon stood still and shivered for a minute, clutching her little bundle under her cloak, and trying to collect her ideas.