“You ask me if I have forgotten the past, Monsieur Horace.  I think of it always—­always.  I cannot like England, and English life.  Aunt Barbara will not let me speak of it, and I try to forget it when she is by, but I cannot.  Aunt Barbara is very kind—­kinder than you can imagine—­it is not that; but I am weary of it all so.  When we walk in the Park, or sit here in the evening, reading, I am thinking of all the beautiful places there are in the world; of all the great things to be done, of all that people are seeing, and doing, and enjoying.  I wish I could get away; I wish I could go anywhere—­if I could run away—­I have a voice, I could sing, I could make money enough to live upon.  I think I should have done so, Monsieur Horace, if I had not known you were coming home.  Yes, if I could run away somewhere, where I could breathe—­be free——­”

“You must never do that,” cried Graham hastily—­he was standing opposite to her now, with his back to the fire; “you don’t know what you are saying, Madelon.  Promise me that you will not think of it even.”

“I was talking nonsense, I don’t suppose I meant it really,” she answered; “I could not do it, you know; but I promise all the same, as you wish it.”

“And you always keep your promises, I know,” said Graham, smiling at her.

“Ah, do not,” she cried, suddenly covering her face with her hands, “don’t speak of that, Monsieur Horace—­I know now—­ah, yes, I understand what you must have thought—­but I did not then; indeed I was only a child then, I did not know what I was doing.”

“I don’t think you are much more than a child now,” said Graham, taking one of her hands in his; “you are not much altered, after all, Madelon.”

“Am I not?” she said.  “But I have tried to improve; I have worked very hard, I thought it would please you, and that you would be glad to find me different—­and I am different,” she added, with a sudden pathetic change in her voice.  “I understand a great deal now that I never thought of before; I think of the old life, but it is not all with pleasure, and I know why Aunt Barbara—­and yet I do love it so much, and you are a part of it, Monsieur Horace—­when you speak your vice seems to bring it back; and you call me Madelon—­no one else calls me Madelon—­” Her voice broke down.

“You are not happy, my dear little girl,” said Graham, in his old kind way, and trying to laugh off her emotion.  “I shall have to prescribe for you.  What shall it be?—­a course of balls and theatres?  What should Aunt Barbara say to that?”

“She would not employ you for a doctor again, I think,” said Madelon, smiling.  “No, I am not unhappy, Monsieur Horace—­only dull sometimes; and Aunt Barbara would say, that is on account of my foreign education.  I know she thinks all foreigners frivolous and ill educated; I have heard her say so.”