“Yes,” said Graham, “I have been doing plenty of hard work lately; but I have come down into the country to be idle, and have some fun, as Madge would say.  We will take our holidays together, will we not, Madge?” he added, as the child, followed by her mother, came into the room.

Lady Lorrimer’s ball was the culminating point of a series of festivities given in honour of the coming of age of an eldest son.  To ordinary eyes, I suppose, it was very like any other ball, to insure whose success no accessory is wanting that wealth and good taste can supply; but to our Madelon there was something almost bewildering in this scene at once familiar and so strange; in these big, lighted, crowded rooms; in this music, whose every beat seemed to rouse a thousand memories and associations, liking the present with the so remote past.  As for Madelon herself, she made a success, ideal almost, as if she had indeed been the enchanted Princess of little Madge’s fairy tale.  Something rare in the style of her beauty—­ something in her foreign air and appearance, distinguished her at once in the crowd of girls; she was sought after from the moment she entered the room, and the biggest personages present begged for an introduction to Miss Linders.  The girl was not insensible to her triumphs; her cheeks flushed, her eyes brightened with excitement and pleasure.  Once, in a pause of the waltz, she was standing with her partner close to where Graham was leaning against a wall.  He had an air of being horribly bored, as indeed he was; but Madelon’s eye caught his, and he was obliged to smile in answer to her look of radiant pleasure.

“You are enjoying yourself, I see, Madelon,” he said.

“I never was so happy!” she cried.  “Ah! if you knew how I love dancing!—­and it is so many years since I have had a waltz!”

Later on in the evening, Lady Lorrimer, the fashionable, gay, kind-hearted hostess, came up to her.

“Miss Linders,” she said, “I have a favour to ask of you.  My aunt, Lady Adelaide Spencer, is passionately fond of music, and Mrs. Vavasour has been telling us how beautifully you sing.  Would it be too much to ask you for one song?  It is not fair, I know, in the midst of a ball, but the next dance is only a quadrille, I see——­”

“I shall be most happy,” says Madelon, blushing up, and following Lady Lorrimer down a long corridor into a music-room.  There were not above a dozen people present when she began to sing, but the room was quite full before she rose from the piano.  She sang one song after another, as it was asked for—­French, German, English.  The excitement of the moment, the sense of triumph and success, seemed to fill her with a sort of exaltation; never had her voice been so true and powerful, her accent so pure, her expression so grand and pathetic; she sang as if inspired by the very genius of song.

“We must not be unconscionable, and deprive Miss Linders of all her dancing,” said Lady Lorrimer at last—­“you would like to go back to the ball-room now, would you not?  But first let me introduce you to my aunt; she will thank you better than I can for your singing.”