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"No, no," he answered kindly; "that would not do at all, Madelon; it does not do for little girls to run about the world making fortunes. Your father used to take you to those rooms, but he would not have liked to have seen you there alone last night, and you must never go again." He tried to speak lightly, but the words aroused some new consciousness in the child, and she coloured scarlet.

One can fancy Madelon as she walks along the dim church; one or two lights twinkle here and there in the darkness, the taper she holds shines on her little pale face, and her brown eyes are lighted up with a sudden glow of enthusiasm, devotion, supplication, as she kneels for a moment before the Virgin's altar, with an Ave-Maria on her lips, and an unspoken prayer in her heart.

Burr looked at his own home, as he went by, as if he had never seen it; even his memory of himself and his childhood days was dim, and he and Madelon, glancing at Lot's windows and having his image forced, as it were, upon their consciousness, regarded it as they might have done an actor in some old drama of history in which they also had taken part, but which had long since passed off the stage.

Madelon saw the cant of his head and swing of his shoulders, with a half sense of shame that he was not Burr, and yet with a sudden understanding of him that she had never felt before. She had not seen him since her betrothal to Burr. She thought to herself that he was thinner, and that the red flush on his cheeks was the flush of fever and not of the summer sun. "How do you do, Lot?" she said.

Many a pretty girl, flushing sweetly under Jim Otis's gay smile, and perhaps under his caressing arm, had ridden behind that little canny mare, who learned well the meaning of the careless rein along the woodland roads. However, to-day there was no careless rein. At the first slack Madelon herself had reached the whip and touched the gently ambling neck.

He half raised himself feebly, and his cough shook the bed. Madelon waited until he lay back, gasping. "You are mad to talk so," she said again, but her voice was softer. "No madder than my ancestors made me," Lot stammered, feebly. Great drops of sweat stood on his forehead. Madelon stood looking at him. He lay still, breathing hard, for a little; then he spoke again.

"I do not desire to influence her in any way; I would not for the world that she should make any sacrifice on my account, and then be miserable for ever after." "My dear Horace, you do not suppose Maria " "My dear Georgie, I know what Maria is, and you must allow me to take my own way." He began to stride up and down the room with his hands in his pockets, Madelon watching him in silence.

No one looked at our poor little Madelon, as, half-bewildered, she stood for a moment on the platform, her bundle on her arm, her veil pulled down over her face; one after the other they vanished, and then she too followed, out into the tree-bordered road, with the familiar hills on either side, sheltering the little gay white town.

It was on the evening of the same day that Madelon, coming in from the garden where she had been wandering alone in the twilight, found Horace discussing his plans with Mrs. Vavasour, who was making tea. She would have gone away again, but Graham called her back, and went on talking to his sister.

It was all that was needed to make their supposition a certainty Madelon had run away. This point settled, a calmer feeling began to prevail, and, as their first consternation subsided, the nuns began to reflect that after all worse things might have happened.