CHAPTER II.

Sehnsucht.

Graham had numberless engagements in London, and except at breakfast, or at lunch perhaps, little was seen of him at his aunt’s house during the first days after his arrival in town.  One evening, however, coming home earlier than usual, he found the two ladies still in the drawing-room, and joining them at the fireside, he first made Madelon sing to him, and then, beginning to talk, the conversation went on till long after midnight, as he sat relating his travels and adventures.  Presently he brought out his journal, and read extracts from it, filling up the brief, hurried notes with fuller details as he went on, and describing to them the plan of his book, some chapters of which were already written, and which he hoped to bring out before the season was over.  Mrs. Treherne was a perfect listener; she was sufficiently well informed to make it worth while to tell her more, and she knew how to put intelligent questions just at the right moment.  As for Madelon, she had been busily engaged on some piece of embroidery when he first began talking, but gradually her hands had dropped into her lap, and with her eyes fixed on him in the frankest unconsciousness, she had become utterly absorbed in what he was saying.  Graham’s whole heart was in his work, past and present, and this rapt naive interest on the part of the girl at once flattered and encouraged him.

“I can trust you two,” he said, putting away his papers at last, “and I am not forestalling my public too much in letting you hear all this; but you are my first auditors, and my first critics.  You won’t betray me, Madelon?” he added, turning to her with a smile.

She shook her head, smiling back at him without speaking; and then, rising, began to fold up her work, while Mrs. Treherne said,—­

“I should have thought you would have found your first audience at Ashurst.”

“I did try it one evening,” he said, “but one of the children began to scream, and Georgie had to go and attend to it; and the Doctor went to sleep, and Maria, who had been all the afternoon in a stuffy school-room, looking after a school-feast or something of the sort, told me not to mind her, and presently went to sleep too; so I gave it up, after that.”

“It was certainly not encouraging,” said Mrs. Treherne; “but you must surely have fallen upon an unfortunate moment; they do not go to sleep every evening, I presume?”

He did not answer; he was looking at Madelon, his eyes following her as she moved here and there about the room, putting away her work, closing the piano, setting things in order for the night.  It was a habit he had taken up, this of watching her whenever they were in the room together, wondering perhaps how his little Madelon had grown into one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen.  Indeed she was little Madelon no longer—­and yet not wholly