it would be useless for Graham to write any more letters, as Madelon would not be allowed to see them.  Graham received this letter at Balaklava, at the end of a long day’s work, and laughed out loud as he read the stiff, formal little epistle, which, to the young man in the midst of the whirl and bustle of camps and hospitals, seemed like a voice from another world; there was something too ludicrous in the notion of a child of eleven years old being forbidden to receive letters, because she might possibly be a nun nine or ten years hence.

“As for that, we’ll see about it by-and-by, old lady,” he said to himself, “but in the meantime there is no use in writing letters that are not to be delivered;” and then he thrust Mademoiselle Linders’ letter into his pocket, and thought no more about it.

So Madelon heard nothing more of Monsieur Horace, though she often, often thought of him, and wondered what he was doing.  He was very busy, very hard-worked; an army-surgeon had no sinecure in the Crimea in those days, as we know, and it was perhaps well for the child, who cared more for him than for any one else in the world, that she knew nothing of his life at this time, of wintry battle-fields and hospital tents, of camps and trenches, where, day and night, he had to fight in his own battle with sickness, and wounds, and death.  No news from the war came to Madelon’s ears, no whisper from all the din and clamour that were filling Europe, penetrated to this quiet, out-of-the-world, little world in which her lot was cast.  The mighty thunder of the guns before Sebastopol rolled, echoing, to the north, and roused sunny cities basking in the south, and stirred a million hearts in the far islands of the west; but it died away before the vine-covered gate, the white-washed walls of the little Belgian convent.  There life stole on at an even pace, little asked of it, yielding little in return, and amongst that peaceful Sisterhood, one little restless spirit, ever seeking and feeling after what she could not find, looking in the faces of all around her, if so be some one could help her, and, with a child’s instinct, rejecting each in turn.

END OF VOL.  I.

MY LITTLE LADY.

COPYRIGHT EDITION.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL.  II.

LEIPZIG

BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ

1871.

The Right of Translation is reserved.

PART II.

(continued.)

MY LITTLE LADY.

CHAPTER VII.

Fever.

For more than two uneventful years Madelon remained in the convent; but early in the third spring after her arrival, a low fever broke out, which for the time completely disturbed the peaceful, even current of existence there, and, by its results, altered, as it happened, the whole course of her own life.