From our small, ten-year-old Madelon, however, all this still
lay hidden; for the present, the outward pressure, which had
weighed too heavily on her little mind and brain, removed, she
returned with a glad reaction to her old habits of thought and
speech. Not entirely indeed; the education she had received,
remained and worked; the "obstinate questionings," an answer
to which she had twice vainly sought, were unforgotten, and
still awaited their reply. This little Madelon, to whom the
golden gates had been opened, though ever so slightly--to whom
the divine, lying all about her and within her, had been
revealed, though ever so dimly--could never be quite the same
as the little Madelon who, careless and unthinking, had
strayed into the great church that summer morning six months
ago; but the child herself was as yet hardly conscious of
this, and neither, we may be sure, was M. Linders, as with
renewed cheerfulness, and spirits, and chatter, she danced
along by his side under the new budding trees, under the fair
blue skies.
It was soon after this, when the delicious promise of an early
spring was brightening the streets and gardens of Florence,
filling them with sunshine and flowers, that another shadow
fell upon the brightness of Madelon's life, and one so dark
and real, as to make all others seem faint and illusory by
comparison.
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