Spa was, as
she well knew, but a short distance from Liege; she would at
once beg her aunt to allow her to go over there for a day, or
two days, if one were not enough, and then--why, once there,
everything would be easy, and perhaps, even before Monsieur
Horace came back from Germany, as he had said he would, all
might be done, the promise redeemed, the fortune made! A most
childish and childlike plan, founded so entirely on deductions
drawn from experiences in the past, so wholly without
reference to the probabilities of the future, and yet not the
less the result of a fixed resolution in Madelon's mind, which
no subsequent change in the mere details of carrying it out
could affect. For, in her small undeveloped character lay
latent an integrity and strength of will, a tenacity of
purpose, which were already beginning to work, unconsciously,
and by instinct as it were, for she could assuredly never have
learnt from her father, who regarded honesty and integrity as
merely inconvenient weaknesses incidental to human nature
under certain conditions. But to Madelon they were precisely
those sacred truths which lie hidden in our inmost hearts, and
which, when once revealed to us, we cling to as our most
steadfast law, and which to deny were to denounce our best and
purest self.
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