The
morning hours slipped away; there was nothing to be done while
M. Linders remained in this state, and Madelon, by Horace's
advice, took a book, and seated herself on a low stool by the
window to read. Now and then she would stand looking at her
father with a most pitiful yearning in her great brown eyes;
once or twice, M. Linders, in his dull slumber, half torpor,
half sleep, seemed in some sort conscious of her presence; he
moved his head uneasily, said "Madeleine," and then some low
muttered words which she could not catch, but he never quite
roused up, and after each throb of expectation and hope, she
could only return to her book, and her silent watching.
Graham went in and out, or sat reading and writing at the
table, and at twelve o'clock he made Madelon go downstairs to
breakfast with Madame Lavaux in her own little sitting-room.
Madame, who was really very fond of her, had forgotten all
about the altercation of the night before. Indeed she was both
good-natured and kind-hearted as soon as she could allow her
better impulses to have their own way; but she was a little
apt, as are most people to whom life resolves itself into a
narrow ministering to their personal pains and pleasures, to
look upon untoward occurrences as evidence of the causeless
animosity of some vague impersonality, continually on the
watch to adjust the largest events of life so as to occasion
her particular inconvenience.
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