out of little Madelon’s existence, as if they had never been; she could almost fancy she had been sleeping all these months, and had awakened to find all the same—­ah! no, not quite the same.  Madelon had a sharp little pang of grief as she thought of her father, and then a glad throb of joy as she thought of Monsieur Horace—­and then she suddenly discovered that she was horribly hungry, and, jumping up, she began to walk towards the village.

Not fifty yards from where she had been sleeping stood the hotel where she had so often stayed, and where she had first met Horace Graham.  There, too, everything was stirring and awakening into activity—­shutters being thrown back, windows opened, the sunny courtyard swept out.  Madelon stood still for a moment looking on.  She wondered whether her old friend, Mademoiselle Cecile, was still there; she thought it would be very pleasant to go in and see her, and have some breakfast in the big salle-a-manger, with the pink and yellow paper roses, and long rows of windows looking out into the courtyard and garden.  But then, she further reflected, breakfasting at an hotel might probably cost a great deal of money, and she had so little money to spare; so that on the whole it might be better to see what she could find in a shop, and she walked quickly up the village street.  Chaudfontaine contains none of the luxuries, and as few as possible of the necessaries of life, which are for the most part supplied from Liege; but sour bread is not unknown there, and Madelon having procured a great, dark tough hunch for her sous, turned back towards the hotel.  She stood outside the iron railing, eating her bread, and watching what was going on inside; the stir and small bustle had a positive fascination for her, after her months of seclusion in the convent.  It brought back her old life with the strangest vividness, joining on the present with the past which had been so happy; it was as if she had been suddenly brought back into air and light after long years of darkness and silence.  Through the open door of the hotel she could see the shadowy green of the garden beyond.  Was the swing in which she had so often sat for hours still there?  The windows of the salon were open too, and there were the old pictures on the wall, the piano just where it used to stand, and a short, stout figure, in skirt and camisole, moving about, who might be Mademoiselle Cecile herself.  Presently some children came running out into the courtyard, with shining hair and faces, and clean white pinafores, fresh out of the nurse’s hands.  Madelon looked at them with a sudden sense of having grown much older than she used to be—­almost grown up, compared to these small things.  She had been no bigger than that when she had first seen Monsieur Horace.  She tried to recall their first meeting, but in truth she could not remember much about it; it was so long ago, and succeeding visits had so nearly effaced the remembrance of that early time, that it was rather the shadowy memory of a memory, than the reality itself, that came back to her mind.