owingly. "Those are very fine stories that you tell us
there, Mademoiselle, but when I related them at home they said
it was clear your papa must have been a very wicked man."

Madelon turned quite white and walked up to the girl, her
teeth set, her small fists clenched. "You are wicked!" she
stammered out; "how dare you say such things? I--I will never
speak to you again!" and then she turned, and walked off
without another word.

The matter did not end here, however, for the children talked
of it among themselves, the nuns heard of it, and, finally, it
reached the ears of Madame la Superieure herself. Madelon,
summoned into the awful presence of her aunt, received the
strictest orders never again to refer to these past
experiences in any way. "You are my child now," says Madame,
overwhelming the poor little culprit before her with her
severest demeanour, "and must learn to forget all these
follies." If Madelon feared any one, it was her aunt, who had
never cared to win her little niece's love by any show of
affection; the child came before her trembling, and escaped
from her gladly. She had no inclination to draw down further
reprimands by disobedience in this particular, so far as words
went, nor indeed had she any temptation to do so. From this
time she kept more apart from the rest of the children, rarely
joining in their games, and preferring even Soeur Lucie's
society to that of her small companions. So, altogether,
Madelon's first attempts at a convent life were not a success,
and time only brought other sad deficiencies to light.

Whatever the nuns may have thought or said, concerning her
ignorance of history, geography, and arithmetic, it was a far
more serious matter when there came to be a question of her
religious knowledge. The good sisters were really horrified at
the complete blank they found, and lost no time in putting her
through a course of the most orthodox instruction. Before she
had been a month in the convent, she knew almost as much as
Nanette, had learnt why people go to church and what they do
there, had studied her catechism, could find her places in her
prayer-book, could repeat Ave Marias and Paternosters, and
tell her beads like every one else. And so Madelon's questions
are answered at last, her perplexities solved, her yearnings
satisfied! She apprehended quickly all that she was taught, so
far as in her lay, and vaguely perceived something still
beyond her powers of apprehension,