never went beyond a repetition of it all—­only for her father she, perhaps, substituted Monsieur Horace:  for Monsieur Horace, we may be sure, was not forgotten, any more than her promise to him; though, indeed, this last had been so long in abeyance that she had ceased to think of it as likely to be speedily fulfilled.  She had almost come to regard it as one of the many things referred to that somewhat vague period when she should be grown up, and when, in some way—­how she did not know—­she would be released from the convent and from Aunt Therese, and be at liberty to come and go as she pleased.  In the meantime she had almost given up hoping for Monsieur Horace’s return.  The time when she had last seen him and heard from him already seemed so remote to her childish memory.  No one ever spoke to her about him, and he never wrote to her.  She did not for a moment think he had forgotten her; she had too much confidence in him for that; but by degrees a notion, vague at first, but gradually becoming a fixed idea destined to have results, established itself in foolish little Madelon’s head, that he was waiting till he should hear from her that his fortune was made before he would come back to her.  Madelon would get quite unhappy when she thought of this—­ he must think her so faithless and forgetful, yet how could she help it?  That the promise had made as deep an impression upon him as upon her she never doubted for a moment; and was it not most possible, and even probable, that he was expecting to hear of the result, perhaps even in want of this wonderful fortune, on which he must be counting?  It was a sad thought, this, to our Madelon, but gradually it became a confirmed one in her mind.

How long this state of things would have lasted—­whether, with the fading of childish impressions, present abiding influences might have taken possession of her, whether, some few years hence, some sudden development of her devotional tendencies might have roused her latent powers of enthusiasm, and turned them in a new direction just at the moment when youthful ardour is most readily kindled, and tender, fervent hearts most easily touched—­whether, in such a case, our little Madelon, inspired with new beliefs, would have renounced her old life in the fervour of her acceptance of the new, and, after all, have taken the nun’s vows, and been content to allow her native energy and earnestness to find scope in the loftiest aspirations of a convent life—­all this can never now be known.  Something there was in her character which, under certain conditions, might have developed in such a direction.  The time might, indeed, surely would have come, had she remained in the convent, when a sudden need and hunger for sympathy, and perhaps excitement, would have risen in her soul, too keen and imperative to be satisfied with past memories; and when, in the absence of all support and friendship in the outer world, she might have seized on whatever she could find in the narrow