Lady Adelaide Spencer, the great lady of the neighbourhood, a short, stout, good-natured old woman in black velvet, and a grizzled front, gave Madelon a most flattering reception.

“Sit down and talk to me a little,” she said.  “I want to thank you again for your lovely voice and singing.  It is not every young lady who would give up her dancing just for an old woman’s caprice.”

“Indeed I like singing as much as dancing,” says Madelon.

“And you do both equally well, my dear; you may believe me when I tell you so, for I know what good dancing is, and I have been watching you all the evening.  You must come and see me and sing to me again.  You live with your aunt, Mrs. Treherne, Mrs. Vavasour tells me.”

“Yes,” replied Madelon.

“I knew Mrs. Treherne well years ago; tell her from me when you go home, that an old woman has fallen in love with her pretty niece, and ask her to bring you to see me.  She is staying at Ashurst, I believe?”

“Yes,” said Madelon, “we are both at Dr. Vavasour’s house.  I have been there all the spring and summer, and Aunt Barbara has come for a few weeks before we go home to Cornwall.”

“Do you live always in Cornwall?” asked Lady Adelaide.  “Have you never been abroad?  Your French and German in singing were quite perfect, but you seem to me to speak English with a foreign accent, and a very pretty one too.”

“I was born abroad,” answered Madelon—­“I spent all the first part of my life on the Continent.  I have been in England only five years.”

“Ah, that accounts for it all, then.  What part of the Continent do you come from?”

“I was born in Paris,” says unthinking Madelon, “but we—­I travelled about a great deal; one winter I was in Florence, and another in Nice, but I know Germany and Belgium best.  I was often at Wiesbaden, and Homburg, and Spa.”

“Very pretty places, all of them,” said Lady Adelaide, “but so shockingly wicked!  It is dreadful to think of the company one meets there.  Did you ever see the gambling tables, my dear?  But I dare say not; you would of course be too young to be taken into such places.”

“Yes, I have seen them,” said Madelon, suddenly scarlet.

“My health obliges me to go to these baths from time to time,” continued the old lady; “but the thought of what goes on in those Kursaals quite takes away any pleasure I might otherwise have; and the people who frequent the tables—­the women and the men who go there night after night!  I assure you my blood has run cold sometimes when one of those notorious gamblers has been pointed out to me, and I think of the young lives he may have ruined, the young souls he may have tempted to destruction.  I myself have known some sad cases—­I am sure you sympathise with me, Miss Linders?”

“Lady Adelaide,” said a portly gentleman, coming up, “will you allow me to take you into supper?”