"
When Madelon went to her room that night, she sat long over
her fire, pondering, girl-fashion, on her talk with Horace
Graham. The tones of his voice were still ringing in her ears;
she seemed still to see his kind look, to feel the friendly
grasp of his hand; and as she thought of him, her familiar
little bed-room, with its white curtained bed, and pictured
walls, and well-filled bookshelves, seemed to vanish, and she
saw herself again, a desolate child, sitting at the window of
the Paris hotel that hot August night her father died, weeping
behind the convent grating, crouched on the damp earth in the
dark avenues of the Promenade a Sept Heures. He had not
changed in all these years, she thought; he had come back kind
and good as ever, to be her friend and protector, as he had
always been; and he had said she was not altered much either,
and yet she was--ah! so altered from the unconscious,
unthinking, ignorant child he had left. She began to pace up
and down the room, where indeed she had spent many a wakeful
night before now, thinking, reflecting, reasoning, trying to
make out the clue to her old life--striving to reconcile it
with the new life around her--not too successfully on the
whole.
Pages:
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514