The man obeyed.  It opened at the bottom of the ladder-like staircase, a gleam of light from above, showing where another door at the top step led into a small bed-room.  Jeanne-Marie carried Madelon upstairs like a baby, took off her hat and damp cloak, laid her on the bed, and then ran downstairs again for a glass of cordial.

Madelon, however, was already reviving, and when Jeanne-Marie went up to her again, she raised herself on the bed, resting on one elbow, and fixed her large eyes upon the woman, first with a look of blank unconsciousness, and then with a sudden light of terror in them, as of some wild hunted thing just caught by its pursuers.

“Don’t take me back to the convent!” she cried in sharp, piteous accents; “don’t take me back; I can’t go, I can’t—­no, no, no!”

“No one shall take you back,” said Jeanne-Marie, trying to soothe her.  But she paid no heed.

“Indeed I can’t go.  Ah, Madame, you said you knew papa; have pity upon me!  I promised him I would never be a nun.  He died, you know, and sent me to the convent at Liege to be with Aunt Therese; but he made me promise before he died.  I can’t go back—­I should die too.  Ah, Madame, have pity on me!”

She was kneeling on the bed now, her hands clasped with her pitiful little imploring gesture.  Jeanne-Marie came close to her, and smoothed back her hair caressingly with her rough work-a-day fingers.

“Soyez tranquille, mon enfant,” she said, “you shall not be taken back to the convent, and no one shall make you a nun.”

“You promise?” said Madelon, catching hold of her arm, and looking into her face with eager, suspicious eyes; “you promise not to take me back?”

“Yes, I promise,” said the woman; “fear nothing, ma petite.”

“And you won’t tell Aunt Therese that I ran away?  For she would be so angry, you know; she wanted to make me a nun like herself; you won’t tell her—­you won’t, you won’t?”

“No, no,” said Jeanne-Marie.  “I will tell nothing, you are quite safe here; now lie down and be quiet, and I will give you something nice to drink.”

But Madelon’s eyes wandered; the terrified look came again, and she clung tighter and tighter to Jeanne-Marie.

“Please ask Aunt Therese to go away!” she cried; “she is standing there in the corner of the room, staring at me; she will not move—­there—­there she is, don’t you see?  Oh, tell her to go away—­she stares at me so, and oh! there is a coffin at her side, it is all over death’s heads; Aunt Therese has a death’s head—­oh! take me away, take me away!”

With a shriek of terror the child threw herself back on the bed, covering her eyes with her hands, burying her face in the pillow.

Jeanne-Marie went to the top of the stairs and called “Jacques Monnier!”

“Hein?” said the man, coming slowly to the door below, and standing with his broad figure framed in it.