circle in which she moved, to still that imperious craving.  Not in vain, then, might have appeared those old dreams and visions in Florence long ago.  Madelon might have learnt to find in them a new and deep significance, an interpretation in accordance with her latest teaching, and through the dim years they might have come back to her—­prophetic warnings, as she might have been taught to consider them—­linking themselves with present influences, to urge her on to one course.  Her father’s last command, her own promises, sacred as she held them now, might have availed nothing then, against what she might have been taught to consider a voice from on high, a call of more than earthly authority.

Such, we say, might have been the turn things would have taken with Madelon, had the uninterrupted, monotonous convent life continued to be hers.  But long before her mind was prepared for any such influences, early in the third year after her father’s death, certain events occurred, which brought this period of her history to an abrupt close.

How, or why the fever broke out—­whether it was the result of a damp, unhealthy winter, or through infection brought by one of the school-children, or from any other obvious cause, we need not inquire here.  It first showed itself about the middle of February, and within a fortnight half the nuns had taken it, the school was broken up, and the whole convent turned into a hospital for the sick and dying.

Two of the sisters died within the first week or two; one was very old, so old, indeed, that the fever seemed to be only the decisive touch needed to extinguish the feeble life, that had been uncertainly wavering for months previously; the other was younger, and much beloved.  And then came a sense as of some general great calamity, a sort of awe-struck mourning, with which real grief had, perhaps, little to do.  The Superior herself had been struck with the fever, and in three days she was dead.  Her vigils, her fastings, the wearying abnegations of her stern, hard life had left her little strength for struggling against the disease when it laid hold of her at last, and so she too died in her cell one cold, bleak March morning, with a hushed sisterhood gathered round her death-bed, and gazing on it, as on that of a departing saint.  Little beloved, but much revered, Therese Linders also had got that she had laboured for, and was now gone to prove the worth of it; that which she had valued most in her narrow world had been awarded her to the full—­much honour, but small affection; much glorification to her memory as to one of surpassing sanctity, few tears of tender or regretful recollection.  She had had a strange, loveless life, with a certain pathos in it too, as in the life of every human being, if looked at aright.  Not always, one may imagine, had such cold, relentless pietism, such harsh indifference possessed her.  She lies there now, still and silent for evermore on earth, a crucifix between her