There must have been something good and true about this man, roue and gambler though he was, that, somehow, he himself and those around him had missed hitherto, but that sprang willingly into life when appealed to by the innocent faith, the undoubting love of his little child.  Thus much Madelon all unconsciously accomplished, but more than this she could not do.  M. Linders did not become a reformed character for her sake:  he had never had any particular principles, and Madelon’s loving innocence, which aroused all his best emotions, had no power to stir in him any noble motives or high aspirations, which, if they existed at all, were buried too deep to be awakened by the touch of her small hand.  His misdeeds had never occasioned him much uneasiness, except as they had affected the conduct of others towards himself; and he had no reproaches, expressed or implied, to fear from Madelon.  “No one had ever so believed in him before!” he would sigh, with a feeling not without a certain pathos in its way, though with the ring of false sentiment characteristic of the man, and with an apparent want of perception that it was ignorance rather than belief that was in question.  Madelon believed indeed in his love, for it answered readily to her daily and hourly appeals, but she cannot be aid to have believed in his honour and integrity, for she can hardly have known what they meant, and she made no claims upon them.  It was, perhaps, happy for her that the day when she should have occasion to do so never arrived.

She was not left quite uneducated, however; her father taught her after his own fashion, and she gained a good deal of practical knowledge in their many wanderings.  When she was six years old she could talk almost as many languages, could dance, and could sing a variety of songs with the sweetest, truest little voice; and by the time she was eight or nine, she had learned both to write and read, though M. Linders took care that her range of literature should be limited, and chiefly confined to books of fairy-tales, in which no examples drawn from real life could be found, to correct and confuse the single-sided views she received from him.  This was almost the extent of her learning, but she picked up all sorts of odd bits of information, in the queer mixed society which M. Linders seemed everywhere to gather round him, and which appeared to consist of waifs and strays from every grade of society—­from reckless young English milords, Russian princes, and Polish counts, soi-disant, down to German students and penniless artists.

It was, no doubt, fortunate, even at this early age, that Madelon’s little pale face, with its wide-open brown eyes, had none of the prettiness belonging to the rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed, golden-haired type of beauty, and that she thus escaped a world of flattery and nonsense.  She was silent too in company, as a rule, keeping her chatter and laughter, for the most part, till she was alone with her father, and content sometimes to sit as quiet as a mouse for a whole evening, watching what was going on around her; she was too much accustomed to strangers ever to feel shy with them, but she cared little for them, unless, as in Horace Graham’s case, they happened to take her fancy.