altered after all.  She was tall now, above the middle height, and her hair was a shade darker, and fastened up in long plaits at the back of her head; but her cheeks were pale as in old days, and a slight accent, an occasional idiom, something exceptional in style, and gesture, and manner, showed at once and unmistakably, her foreign birth and breeding.  As Mrs. Treherne had once said, she had not, and never would have, an English air and complexion; but her beauty was not the less refined and rare that the clear, fair cheeks were without a tinge of colour, that one had to seek it in the pure red lips, the soft brown hair, the slight eyebrows and dark lashes, the lovely eyes that had learnt to express the thought they had once only suggested, but still retained something of the old, childish, wistful look.  And yet Graham watched her with a vague sense of disappointment.

“What do you think of Madeleine?” Mrs. Treherne said to him the following afternoon; he had come in early, and they were together alone in the drawing-room.  “Do you not find her grown and improved?  Do you think her pretty?  She is perhaps rather pale, but——­”

“She has certainly grown, Aunt Barbara, but this is not astonishing—­young ladies generally do grow between the ages of thirteen and eighteen:  and I think her the prettiest girl I ever saw—­not at all too pale.  As for being improved—­well—­I suppose she is.  She wears very nice dresses, I observe, and holds herself straight, and I daresay knows more geography and history than when we last parted.”

“You are disappointed in her,” said Mrs. Treherne.  “Do you know I suspected as much, Horace, from the way in which you look at her and speak to her.  Tell me in what way—­why you are not satisfied?”

“But I am satisfied,” cried Graham; “why should I not be?  Madelon appears to me to have every accomplishment a young lady should have; she sings to perfection, I daresay, dances equally well, and I have no doubt that on examination she would prove equally proficient in all the ologies.  I am perfectly satisfied, so far as it is any concern of mine, but I don’t see what right I have to be sitting in judgment one way or the other.”

“You have every right, Horace; I have always looked upon you as the child’s guardian in a way, and in all my plans concerning her education I have considered myself, to a certain extent, responsible to you.”

“It was very good of you, Aunt Barbara, to consider me in the matter.  I thought my responsibility had ceased from the moment you took charge of her; but for her father’s sake—­does Madelon ever speak of him, by-the-by?”

“Never.”

“Never alludes to her past life?”

“Never—­we never speak of it; I have carefully avoided doing so, in the hope that with time, and a settled home, and new interests, she could cease to think of it altogether; and I trust I have succeeded.  The memory of it can only be painful to her now, poor child, for, though I have never referred to the subject in any way, I feel convinced she must have learnt by this time to see her father’s character in its true light.”