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Updated: June 2, 2025
Believing, as she did, that the love was all unsought and unreturned, and being also shocked in all her delicate decorum by such unmaidenly violence and self-betrayal, she regarded Madelon with a strange mixture of scorn and sympathy and fear. Moreover, not one word did she believe of Madelon's assertion that she herself was guilty.
Then she screamed faintly, for Eugene Hautville strode back into the room with a look on his face which she had never seen before. He snatched the silk out of Madelon's hand and thrust it roughly into Dorothy's. "Take it home," he said. "My sister does no work on your wedding-clothes!"
Louis, when he heard the news, gave an involuntary glance at his own hands at the thought of Madelon's crimsoned ones, to which he had tried to blind his memory. "Well, maybe it's the best thing that could happen," he said, grimly, but his wonder over it was great. He knew well enough, however he tried to hide the knowledge from himself, that Madelon's story had been true.
Madelon's brown eyes were the greatest charm of a face which was hardly pretty yet, though it had the promise of beauty in after years; to liken them to those of some dumb, soft, dark-eyed animal is to use a trite comparison; and yet there is, perhaps, no other that so well describes eyes such as these, which seem charged with a meaning beyond that which their owner is able to express in words, or is, perhaps, even conscious of.
Then he went over to the settle and sat down there and bent over, leaning his head on his hands. He knew no more at that moment of Madelon's mind than an utter stranger. It well might be, he thought, that she no longer cared for him. It was not long since she had seemed to, but women, he had always heard, were fickle, and he had so treated her that it might have turned any woman's heart cold.
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.
How she had escaped was indeed at first a mystery, which could not fail to rouse an eager curiosity in the sisters, and a not unpleasing excitement succeeded the first indignation, as, with one accord, they ran to examine Madelon's room. The window stood wide open, the branches of the climbing rose-trees were broken here and there, small footsteps could be traced on the flower- bed below.
"Yes, a great deal," cried Madelon, spreading out her hands, "she always had chance and was very rich; she wore such beautiful toilettes at the balls; she knew a great many gentlemen, and when I went with her they all danced with me." And so on, da capo; it was always the same story, and Graham soon found that he had reached the limits of Madelon's experiences in that direction.
He stared at it, scowling over his great mustache. Then he looked slowly around at his daughter. She was just coming out of the pantry, and faced him as he spoke. "I suppose this is true I've heard," said he. Madelon's face blazed red before his eyes, but her mouth was firm and hard, and her eyes unflinching.
"Does that concern you?" answered the woman sharply enough; "drink your wine, Jacques Monnier, and do not trouble yourself with other people's affairs." "Est-elle morte, la petite?" asked Jacques, recoiling at the sight of Madelon's white face. "Est-elle morte?" repeated Jeanne-Marie, "and with her eyes as wide open as yours!
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