“You must be prepared,” said Horace, after a moment’s pause, “to find her devoted to her father’s memory; and not without reason, I must say, for he was devoted to her, after his own fashion.  She thinks him absolute perfection; and, in fact, I believe this escapade of hers to have been entirely founded on precedents furnished by him.”

“I think it is the most dreadful thing I ever heard of,” said Mrs. Treherne—­“a child of that age alone in such a place!”

“Well, I really don’t know,” answered Graham, half laughing.  “I don’t suppose it has done her much mischief; and of this I am quite sure, that she had no idea of there being any more harm in going to a gambling-table than in going for a walk.”

“That appears to me the worst part of it, that a child should have been brought up in such ignorance of right and wrong.  However, she can be taught differently.”

“Certainly; but don’t you think the teaching had better come gradually?—­it would break her heart, to begin with, to be told her father was not everything she imagines—­if indeed she could be made to understand it just yet, which I doubt.”

“Of course it would be cruel to shake a child’s faith in her father,” answered Mrs. Treherne; “but she must learn it in time.  Monsieur Linders was one of the most worthless men that ever lived, and Charles Moore was as bad, if not worse.  I wonder—­good heavens, Horace, how one wonders at such things!—­I wonder what Magdalen had done that she should be left to the mercy of two such men as those.”

“Well, it is no fault of Madelon’s, at any rate,” Horace began; and then stopped, as the door opened, and Madelon came in.  In her hand she carried a queer little bundle of treasures, that she had brought away with her from the convent—­the old German’s letter, the two that Horace had sent her, and one or two other things, all tied together with a silk thread.

“This is the letter,” she said, selecting one from the packet, and giving it to Mrs. Treherne.  It was the one she had read in the evening twilight in her convent cell last May.  “I am afraid there is no name on it, for there is no beginning nor ending.  I think it must have been burnt.”

“Why, that is your writing, Aunt Barbara!” said Graham, who had come forward to inspect these relics.

“Yes, it is mine,” said Mrs. Treherne.  “It was written by me many years ago.”

She glanced at the letter as she spoke, then crushed it up quickly in her hand, and with a sudden flush on her pale cheek turned to Madelon.

“My dear,” she said, putting one arm round the child’s waist, and caressing her hair with the other hand, “I knew you mother very well; she was my cousin, and the very dearest friend I ever had.  I think you must come and live with me, and be my child, as there is no one else who has any claim on you.”

“Did you know mamma, Madame?” said Madelon.  “And papa—­did you know him?”