"I think I must be a hundred years old," the girl would say to
herself sometimes, after returning from one of those little
parties of which she had spoken to Graham, where she had spent
the evening in the company of a dozen other young ladies of
her own age, all white muslin and sash-ribbons. "These girls,
how tiresome they all are!--how they chatter and laugh, and
what silly jokes they make! How can it amuse them? But they
are still in the school-room, as Aunt Barbara is always
telling me; and before that, they were all in the nursery, I
suppose; they do not know anything about life; their only
experiences concern nurses and governesses; whilst I--I--ah! is
it possible I am no older than they are?"
She would lean her arms on the window-sill, and look out on
the midnight sky; the Abbey chimes would ring out over the
great city, overhead the stars would be shining perhaps, but
down below, between the trees in the Park, a great glare would
show where a million lamps were keeping watch till dawn. Shall
we blame our Madelon, if she sometimes looked away from the
stars, and down upon the glare that brightened far up into the
dark sky? All the young blood was throbbing and stirring in
her veins with such energy and vigour; the world was so wide,
so wide, the circle around her so narrow, and in that bright,
misty past, which, after all, she only half understood, were
to be found so many precedents for possibilities that might
still be hidden in the future.
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