Madelon had long finished her breakfast, but, busy with these recollections, was still lingering outside the courtyard, when a gentleman and lady came out of the hotel and walked down towards the gate.  The gentleman was stout, black-haired, red-faced, and good-humoured-looking; the lady elderly, thin, and freckled, with a much tumbled silk gown, and frizzy, sandy hair, under a black net bonnet, adorned with many artificial flowers.  In all our Madelon’s reminiscences of the past, these two figures assuredly had no place, and yet this was by no means the first time they had met at this very hotel.  The lady was the Countess G——­, with whom one memorable evening Madelon had had a grand fight over a roulette board; the gentleman was Horace Graham’s quondam fellow-traveller, the Countess’s old admirer, and now her husband.

They were talking as they came together down the courtyard, and Madelon caught the last words of their conversation.

“Adieu, mon ami,” cried the lady, as they approached the gate; “I shall rejoin you this afternoon at Liege.”

“And by the earliest train possible, I beg of you,” answered the other.  “I may find it necessary to go on to Brussels this evening.”

“By the earliest train possible, mon ami.  Adieu, then,—­au revoir.”

“Au revoir, ma cherie,” answered the gentleman, turning back to the hotel, but pausing before he had taken a dozen steps.

"Ma cherie, you will not forget my business at Madame Bertrand’s?”

“But no, mon ami, it shall be attended to without fail.”

“Ma cherie——­”

“Mon ami——­”

“You must hasten, or you will miss the train.”

“I go, I go,” cried the Countess, waving her parasol in token of farewell, and hurrying out of the gateway.  These last words aroused Madelon also.  In hearing strange voices talking what seemed some familiar, half-forgotten tongue, she had almost forgotten the train; but she started up now from where she had been half standing, half leaning, and followed the Countess across the bridge into the railway station.  Indeed she had only just time to take her ticket, before the train for Spa came rushing up with slackening speed into the station.  There were few passengers either coming or going at this early hour, but Madelon’s heart gave a great jump as she saw two black-robed figures get out of one of the carriages and come towards her.  In another moment she saw they were Soeurs de Charite, with a dress quite different from that worn by the nuns; but the imaginary alarm suggested very real causes of fear, which somehow had almost slipped from her mind since the first hours of her escape from the convent.  In her new, glad sense of freedom, she had quite forgotten that the hour had long since arrived when her flight must most certainly be discovered, and that there were, after all, still only six miles of road between her and her old life; and it was with