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The sudden changes of fortune, from splendour to poverty of the shabbiest description, the reckless, dishonest expenditure, and the endless debts consequent on it; the means doubtful to say the least of them employed by M. Linders for procuring money; the sense of alienation from all that is best, and noblest, and truest in life; all these, which had gone far to make up the sum of her mother's misery, affected our Madelon hardly at all.
It is a lovely place, a good climate, and I should not feel myself tied down if anything else turned up that suited me better; but there are other considerations in fact, I cannot decide without thinking it well over." "But at any rate, you would not go there till next winter, would you?" said Madelon, with a tremor in her voice which she vainly tried to conceal.
Madelon looked at him as proudly as ever. "Very well," said she. She waited a minute longer; then she laid her hand on the doorlatch. "Wait a minute!" Lot cried. He looked at her hesitatingly. A flush crept over his white face. "Madelon," he began; then his cough interrupted him. He tried to force it back with fierce swallowings, but had to yield.
"'Fraid you'll get run away with. Better take another." "Isn't this horse the fastest you've got on a short stretch?" "S'pose he is, but I dunno 'bout a woman's drivin' of him." Madelon looked as if she were half minded to spring upon the back of the old white and settle the matter summarily. She fairly quivered with impatience.
Let me smoothe your pillow." "No," said Madelon, escaping from her hands with an impatient toss. "Ah, don't go away yet," she added piteously. "Was it true what Soeur Ursule said about me?" "About you, mon enfant?" "Yes, about me that I was to become a nun." "Ah!" said Soeur Lucie, with the air of being suddenly enlightened, "yes yes, I suppose so, since she said it.
You would have flung your arms around him, and you would not have let him go until he told you. Did you do that? Answer me: did you do that?" A great wave of red crept over Dorothy's face, but she replied, with cold dignity: "I throw my arms around no man unbidden!" "Unbidden!" repeated Madelon, and scorn seemed to sound in her voice like the lash of a whip.
"Yes, no," began Madelon; but at that moment, with a shriek, the train entered a tunnel, and the sudden noise and darkness put a stop to the conversation for a time. The Countess began again presently, however, as they went speeding across the next valley. "Do you live at Chaudfontaine?" was her next inquiry.
David Hautville jerked the bridle so fiercely that the mare reared far back again. He jerked her down to her feet, and she made a vicious lunge at him, but he shunted her away. "I'll fasten you into your chamber," he shouted, "if this work goes on! I'll stop your making a fool of yourself." "It is Lot Gordon that is making fools of you all," said Madelon, in a hard, quiet voice.
They were capable of concerted action without speech, and had evolved one purpose of going to bed with no more parley about Lot Gordon and Madelon that night. Brave as these men were, not one of them dared set foot squarely upon the dangerous ground which two of them knew, and three suspected, and look another in the face with the consciousness of his whereabouts in his eyes.
"What's going to be done with Madelon?" cried Eugene, fiercely. "I've been thinking " said his father, slowly. "No sister of mine shall go about rolling herself in the dust at that fellow's feet if I can help it." "I've been thinking would you lock her in her chamber a spell?" "Lock Madelon in her chamber! She'd get out or she'd beat her brains out against the wall."
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