It had never been opened since, to her
knowledge; her father had once told her that she might have
the contents one day when she was a big girl, but that was all
she knew about it.
Madelon had no very keen emotion respecting the mother she had
never known; her father had spoken of her so seldom, and
everything in connection with her had so completely dropped
out of sight, that there had been no scope for the
imaginative, shadowy adoration with which children who have
early lost their mother are wont to regard her memory; her
father had been everything to her, and of her mother's brother
she had none but unpleasant recollections. But now, for the
first time, she was brought face to face with something that
had actually been her mother's, and it was with a sort of
instinctive reverence that she went up to the box and took out
one thing after another. There was some faint scent pervading
them all, which ever afterwards associated itself in Madelon's
mind with that hour in the narrow room and gathering twilight.
There was nothing apparently of the smallest value in the
trunk.
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