It was with the children especially that Madelon made friends in the early days of her visit.  From Mrs. Vavasour she had the kindliest welcome; but the mistress of this busy household had a thousand things to attend to, that left her but little time to bestow on her guest.  She had deputed Maria Leslie to entertain Madelon; but Maria also had her own business—­school-teaching, cottage-visiting in the village; nor, in truth, even when the two were in each other’s society, did they find much to say to each other.  It had never been a secret to Madelon that Graham was engaged to Maria Leslie, and the girl had looked forward, perhaps, to making friends with the woman who was accounted worthy of the honour of being Monsieur Horace’s wife; but the very first day she had turned away disappointed.  There was, both instinctively felt, no common ground on which they could meet and speak a common language intelligible to both; memories, interests, tastes, all lay too wide apart; and as for those larger human sympathies which, wider and deeper than language can express, make themselves felt and understood without its medium, something forbade their touching upon them at all.  There was, from the first, a certain coolness and absence of friendliness in Maria’s manner, which was quite at variance with her usual good-humoured amiability, and which Madelon felt, but did not understand.  She could not guess that it was the expression of a vague jealousy in Maria’s mind, excited by Madelon’s beauty and graciousness of air and manner, and by a knowledge of her past relations with Horace Graham; Maria would hardly have acknowledge it to herself, but it raised an impassable barrier between these two.

As for Graham, no one saw much of him.  He was shut up all day in his brother-in-law’s study, writing, copying notes, sorting and arranging specimens, preparing the book that was to come out in the course of the next season; and, when he did appear, at breakfast or dinner, he was apt to be silent and moody, rarely exchanging more than a few words with any one.  Madelon wondered sometimes at this taciturn Monsieur Horace, so different from the one she had always known; though, indeed, in speaking to her the old kindly light would always come back to his eyes, the old friendly tones to his voice.  But, like every one else, she saw but little of him; and, in fact, Graham in these days, a grim, melancholy, silent man, brooding over his own thoughts, his own hopes, plans, disappointments perhaps, was no very lively addition to a family party.

There was one small person, however, whom our Madelon at once inspired with a quite unbounded admiration for her.  A few evenings after her arrival, some one knocked at her bedroom door as she was dressing for dinner; she opened it, and there stood Madge in the passage, her hands full of red and white daisies.

“I have brought you some flowers, Cousin Madelon,” said the child shyly.

“They are beautiful,” said Madelon, taking them from her; “won’t you come in?  I will put some of them in my hair.”