No news reached him of his child, and he demanded
none. But about twenty months after his wife's death, business
obliged him to go for a few weeks to Paris; and finding
himself with a leisure day on his hands, it occurred to him,
with a sudden impulse, to spend it in the country and go and
see his little girl. He ascertained from Madame Lavaux where
she was, and went.
The woman with whom little Madeleine had been placed lived
about fifteen miles from Paris, in a small village perched
half-way up a steep hill, from the foot of which stretched a
wide plain, where the Seine wound slowly amongst trees and
meadows, and scattered villages. The house to which M. Linders
was directed stood a little apart from the others, near the
road-side, but separated from it by a strip of garden, planted
with herbs and a patch of vines; and as he opened the gate, he
came at once upon a pretty little picture of a child of two
years, in a quaint, short-waisted, long-skirted pinafore,
toddling about, playing at hide-and-seek among the tall poles
and trailing tendrils, and kept within safe limits by a pair
of leading-strings passed round the arm of a woman who sat in
the shade of the doorway knitting.
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