Madelon had no very keen emotion respecting the mother she had never known; her father had spoken of her so seldom, and everything in connection with her had so completely dropped out of sight, that there had been no scope for the imaginative, shadowy adoration with which children who have early lost their mother are wont to regard her memory; her father had been everything to her, and of her mother’s brother she had none but unpleasant recollections.  But now, for the first time, she was brought face to face with something that had actually been her mother’s, and it was with a sort of instinctive reverence that she went up to the box and took out one thing after another.  There was some faint scent pervading them all, which ever afterwards associated itself in Madelon’s mind with that hour in the narrow room and gathering twilight.

There was nothing apparently of the smallest value in the trunk.  Any trinkets that Madame Linders might once have possessed had been parted with long before her death; and anything else that seemed likely to produce money had been sold afterwards.  Here were nothing but linen clothes, which, as Soeur Lucie had hinted, might be made available for Madelon; a shawl, and a cloak of an old-fashioned pattern, a few worn English books, with the name “Magdalen Moore” written on the fly-leaf, at which Madelon looked curiously; a half-empty workbox, and two or three gowns.  Amongst these was a well-worn black silk, lying almost at the bottom of the trunk; and Madelon, taking it out, unfolded it with some satisfaction at the thought of seeing it transformed into a garment for herself.  As she did so, she perceived that some things had been left in the pocket.  It had probably been the last gown worn by Madame Linders, and after her death, in the hurry and confusion that had attended the packing away of her things, under Monsieur Linders’ superintendence, it had been put away with the rest without examination.

A cambric handkerchief was the first thing Madelon pulled out, and, as she did so, a folded paper fluttered on to the ground.  She picked it up, and took it to the window to examine it.  It was the fragment of a half-burned letter, a half sheet of foreign paper closely written in a small, clear hand; but only a fragment, for there was neither beginning nor ending.  It was in English, but Madelon remembered enough of the language to make out the meaning, and this was what she read in the fading light.

It began abruptly thus:—­

“... cannot come to me, and that I must not come to you, that it would do no good, and that M. Linders would not like it.  Well, I must admit, I suppose, but if you could imagine, Magdalen, how I long to see your face, to hear your voice again!  It is hard to be parted for so long, and I weary, oh, how I weary for you sometimes.  To think that you are unhappy, and that I cannot comfort you; that you also sometimes wish for me, and that I cannot come to you—­all this seems at times very