"
"I did try it one evening," he said, "but one of the children
began to scream, and Georgie had to go and attend to it; and
the Doctor went to sleep, and Maria, who had been all the
afternoon in a stuffy school-room, looking after a school-
feast or something of the sort, told me not to mind her, and
presently went to sleep too; so I gave it up, after that."
"It was certainly not encouraging," said Mrs. Treherne; "but
you must surely have fallen upon an unfortunate moment; they
do not go to sleep every evening, I presume?"
He did not answer; he was looking at Madelon, his eyes
following her as she moved here and there about the room,
putting away her work, closing the piano, setting things in
order for the night. It was a habit he had taken up, this of
watching her whenever they were in the room together,
wondering perhaps how his little Madelon had grown into one of
the most beautiful women he had ever seen. Indeed she was
little Madelon no longer--and yet not wholly altered after all.
She was tall now, above the middle height, and her hair was a
shade darker, and fastened up in long plaits at the back of
her head; but her cheeks were pale as in old days, and a
slight accent, an occasional idiom, something exceptional in
style, and gesture, and manner, showed at once and
unmistakably, her foreign birth and breeding.
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