How Madelon kept her Promise.

Madelon was standing in a little upper bedroom of the Hotel de Madrid, a room so high up that from the window one looked over the tops of the trees in the Place Royale below, to the opposite hills.  It was already dusk, but there was sufficient light to enable her to count over the little piles of gold that lay on the table before her, and which, as she counted, she put into a small canvas bag.  It was the third evening after her arrival in Spa; she was preparing for her third visit to the Redoute, and this was what her capital of thirty francs had already produced.

The last ten-franc piece disappeared within the bag, and Madelon, taking her hat and cloak, began to put them on slowly, pausing as she did so to reflect.

“If I have the same luck this evening,” she thinks, “to-morrow I shall be able to write to Monsieur Horace—­if only I have—­and why not?  I have scarcely lost once these last two nights.  Certainly it is better to play in the evening than in the daytime.  I remember now that papa once said so, and to-night I feel certain—­yes, I feel certain that I shall win—­and then to-morrow——­”

She clasped her hands in ecstasy; she looked up at the evening sky.  It was a raw, grey September evening, with gusts of wind and showers of rain at intervals.  But Madelon cared nothing for the weather; her heart was all glowing with hope, and joy, and exultation.  She put on her hat and veil, took up her money, and locking her door after her, ran downstairs.  She hung the key up in Madame Bertrand’s room, but Madame Bertrand was not there.  On Madelon’s arrival at the hotel she had found the excellent old woman ill, and unable to leave her room, and it was in her bed that she had given the child the warmest of welcomes, and from thence that she had issued various orders for her comfort and welfare.  Her attack still kept her confined to her room, and thus it happened that our Madelon, quite independent, found herself at liberty to come and go just as she pleased.

She hung up her key, in the deserted little parlour, and, unchallenged, left the hotel, and went out into the tree-planted Place, where the band was playing, and people walking up and down under the chill grey skies.  She felt very hopeful and joyous, so different from the first time she had started on the same errand, and the fact inspired her with ever-increasing confidence.  She had failed then, and yet here she was, successful in her last attempts, ready to make another crowning trial, and with how many more chances in her favour!  Surely she could not fail now!—­and yet if she should!  She was turning towards the Redoute, when an idea suddenly occurred to her—­an idea most natural, arising, as it did, from that instinctive cry for more than human help, that awakes in every heart on great emergencies, and appealing, moreover, to that particular class of religious sentiment which in our little orphaned Madelon had most readily responded