to convent teaching.  What if it had been the Holy Virgin Mother who had been her protector in all these troubles, who had raised her up friends, and had brought her from death, as it were, to life again, to fulfil her promise?  And if it were so,—­which seemed most probable to Madelon,—­would it not be well to invite her further protection, and even by some small offering to give emphasis to her prayers?  Madelon’s notions, it will be perceived, were not in strict accordance with convent orthodoxy, which would scarcely have been willing to recognize the Virgin’s help in a successful escape from the convent itself; but orthodox notions were the last things with which it was to be expected our Madelon would trouble herself.  Without other thought than that here might be another and sure way of furthering her one object, she made her way into a church, and expending two sous in a lighted taper, carried it to a little side chapel, where, above a flower-decorated altar, a beneficent Madonna seemed to welcome all sad orphans in the world to her all-protecting embrace.

To me there is something infinitely touching in these shrines to the Virgin, with all their associations of suffering and prayer, in their little ex-voto pictures, and flowers, and lighted tapers.  I do not envy those who can see in them nothing but the expression of a pitiable superstition; to my mind they appeal to far wider sympathies, as one thinks of the sick and weary hearts who have come there to seek consolation and help.  Everywhere one comes across these shrines—­in the gloom of some great Cathedral, in some homely village church, in some humble wayside chapel, where, amidst sunny fields and pastures, amidst mountains, streams, and lakes, one reads the little heart-broken scrawls affixed to the grating, praying an Ave-Maria or Paternoster from the passer-by, for a sick person, for a mother watching beside her dying child, for a woman forsaken of the world.  A whole atmosphere of consecrated suffering seems to float round these spots sacred to sorrow, the sorrow that humbly appeals, as it best knows how, to the love, wide enough to embrace and comfort all desolate, and yearning, and heavy-laden souls.

One can fancy Madelon as she walks along the dim church; one or two lights twinkle here and there in the darkness, the taper she holds shines on her little pale face, and her brown eyes are lighted up with a sudden glow of enthusiasm, devotion, supplication, as she kneels for a moment before the Virgin’s altar, with an Ave-Maria on her lips, and an unspoken prayer in her heart.

Half an hour later, Madelon, in the midst of the blaze of light in the big gambling salon of the Redoute, is thinking of nothing in the world but rouge-et-noir and the chances of the game before her.  For the first time she has ventured to push her way through the crowd and take a seat at the table; and for the moment she has forgotten her object, forgotten why she is there even, in the excitement of watching whether