adelon's childhood had known neither
nursery nor sheltered home-garden. Her earliest experiences
had been amidst the larger ventures of life, the deeper
interests that gather round advancing years; her playground
had been the salons of the gayest watering-places in Europe,
her playthings the roulette-board and the little gold and
silver pieces that had passed so freely backwards and forwards
on the long green tables where desperate stakes were ventured,
and fortunes won and lost in a night; and it was amongst these
that she now proposed to try her own little game of
enterprise, and prepare this grand surprise for Monsieur
Horace. The idea was an inspiration to her. Her whole soul was
bound up in Horace Graham; I think she would willingly have
laid down her life for him, and have thought little of the
offering; a sort of _furore_ of gratitude and devotion possessed
her, and here at length was an opportunity for doing something
for him--something he did not know how to do for himself, great
and wise though he was, and this idea added not a little zest
to the plan, in Madelon's opinion, one may be sure. Ah, yes,
she knew what to do, she would go to the gambling-tables, as
she had seen her father and his associates go scores of times;
she would win money for him, she would make his fortune!

So Madelon schemed as she walked along by Graham's side,
whilst he, for his part, had already forgotten her little
speech, if indeed he had ever heard it.

So it is often--a few careless words between two people,
quickly spoken, soon forgotten, by at least one of them--and
yet, perhaps, destined to alter the course of two lives.
Before they had reached the hotel Madelon had arranged not
only the outline, but the details of her scheme. 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 sma