"Well, well," said Jeanne-Marie, "I do not want to hear your secrets, as you know, unless you like to tell them; but I am not going to lose sight of you altogether till I hear you are safe with your friends. You must write me a letter from Spa, and if I do not hear or see anything of you in a week's time, I shall come and look after you."
"Yes, I will write," said Madelon; "and I wish—I wish I was not going away; I have been so happy here." And then she hid her face on Jeanne-Marie's shoulder, while the sky was all rosy with the sunset of the last of these peaceful summer days that our Madelon was to spend at Le Trooz.
Jeanne-Marie could not spare time to go again to Spa the next day, but she went with Madelon to the station, and waited till the train that bore her away was out of sight, and then, all lonely, she walked back to her empty house.
CHAPTER XVI.
How Madelon kept her Promise.
Madelon was standing in a little upper bedroom of the Hôtel de Madrid, a room so high up that from the window one looked over the tops of the trees in the Place Royale below, to the opposite hills. It was already dusk, but there was sufficient light to enable her to count over the little piles of gold that lay on the table before her, and which, as she counted, she put into a small canvas bag. It was the third evening after her arrival in Spa; she was preparing for her third visit to the Redoute, and this was what her capital of thirty francs had already produced.
The last ten-franc piece disappeared within the bag, and Madelon, taking her hat and cloak, began to put them on slowly, pausing as she did so to reflect.
"If I have the same luck this evening," she thinks, "to-morrow I shall be able to write to Monsieur Horace—if only I have—and why not? I have scarcely lost once these last two nights. Certainly it is better to play in the evening than in the daytime. I remember now that papa once said so, and to-night I feel certain—yes, I feel certain that I shall win—and then to- morrow——"
She clasped her hands in ecstasy; she looked up at the evening sky. It was a raw, grey September evening, with gusts of wind and showers of rain at intervals. But Madelon cared nothing for the weather; her heart was all glowing with hope, and joy, and exultation. She put on her hat and veil, took up her money, and locking her door after her, ran downstairs. She hung the key up in Madame Bertrand's room, but Madame Bertrand was not there. On Madelon's arrival at the hotel she had found the excellent old woman ill, and unable to leave her room, and it was in her bed that she had given the child the warmest of welcomes, and from thence that she had issued various orders for her comfort and welfare. Her attack still kept her confined to her room, and thus it happened that our Madelon, quite independent, found herself at liberty to come and go just as she pleased.
She hung up her key, in the deserted little parlour, and, unchallenged, left the hotel, and went out into the tree- planted Place, where the band was playing, and people walking up and down under the chill grey skies. She felt very hopeful and joyous, so different from the first time she had started on the same errand, and the fact inspired her with ever- increasing confidence. She had failed then, and yet here she was, successful in her last attempts, ready to make another crowning trial, and with how many more chances in her favour! Surely she could not fail now!—and yet if she should! She was turning towards the Redoute, when an idea suddenly occurred to her—an idea most natural, arising, as it did, from that instinctive cry for more than human help, that awakes in every heart on great emergencies, and appealing, moreover, to that particular class of religious sentiment which in our little orphaned Madelon had most readily responded to convent teaching. What if it had been the Holy Virgin Mother who had been her protector in all these troubles, who had raised her up friends, and had brought her from death, as it were, to life again, to fulfil her promise? And if it were so,—which seemed most probable to Madelon,—would it not be well to invite her further protection, and even by some small offering to give emphasis to her prayers? Madelon's notions, it will be perceived, were not in strict accordance with convent orthodoxy, which would scarcely have been willing to recognize the Virgin's help in a successful escape from the convent itself; but orthodox notions were the last things with which it was to be expected our Madelon would trouble herself. Without other thought than that here might be another and sure way of furthering her one object, she made her way into a church, and expending two sous in a lighted taper, carried it to a little side chapel, where, above a flower-decorated altar, a beneficent Madonna seemed to welcome all sad orphans in the world to her all-protecting embrace.