y the dark rustling trees,
stands the still convent, where a narrow room awaits this
dreaming eager little watcher. Our poor little Madelon! Not
more difference between this gay, familiar music to which all
her life has been set hitherto, and the melancholy chant of
the nuns, whose echoes have already passed from her memory,
than between the future she is picturing to herself and the
one preparing for her--but she does not know it.

CHAPTER V.

Mademoiselle Linders.

Immediately after breakfast the next morning Graham once more
started for the convent, this time, however, leaving Madelon
at the hotel. He had written from Paris to the Superior
immediately after her brother's death, but had received no
reply. M. Linders' letter he had kept by him to deliver in
person when he should have reached Liege.

Madelon was watching for his return, and ran to meet him with
a most eager face.

"Have you seen my aunt?" she said. "Am I to go?"

"Yes, you are to go, Madelon," he said, looking down on her,
and taking her hands in his. "I have seen your aunt, and we
have agreed that it is best I should take you there this
afternoon."

He sat down and gave her some little account of the interview
he had had with her father's sister; not the whole, however,
for he said nothing of his own feeling of disappointment in
the turn that it had taken, nor of the compassion that he felt
for his little charge.

The fact of M. Linders having quarrelled with his sister had,
on the whole, tended to prejudice the latter in his favour
rather than otherwise, for M. Linders unfortunately seemed to
have had a talent for quarrelling with every respectable
friend and relation that he possessed; and it was with a
strong hope of finding a good and kind guardian for Madelon in
her aunt, that he had started for the convent. He wrote a few
words of explanation on his card, and this, with M. Linders'
letter, he sent in to the Lady Superior, and in return was
requested to wait in the parlour till she should come to him.
A key was handed to him, and he let himself into a large,
square room, furnished with a table, a piano, and some straw
chairs; a wooden grating shut off one end, within which were
another table and more chairs; one or two prints of sacred
subjects were on the walls, two large windows high up showed
the tops of green trees in a sunny inner courtyard,--Graham had
time to take in all these details before a door on the other
side of t