Madelon, unable to
argue out her own ideas on the subject, contented herself with
repeating, that anyhow they had not all been nuns like Soeur
Lucie, which was indisputable.

These were, as we have said, Madelon's happiest times, and,
indeed, they hardly repaid the child for long days of
weariness and despondency, for hours of heart-sick longing for
she knew not what, of objectless hoping, of that saddest form
of home-sickness, that knows of no home for which to pine. In
all the future there was but one point on which her mind could
rest--Monsieur Horace's promised return, and that was too
vague, too remote to afford her much comfort. And her own
promise to him, has she forgotten that? She would not have
been the Madelon that we know if she had done so, but we need
hardly say that she had not been two days in the convent,
before she instinctively perceived how futile were all those
poor little schemes with which she had been so busy the
evening before she parted with Graham, how impossible it would
be to ask or obtain her aunt's permission for going to Spa on
such an errand. The convent was to all intents and purposes a
prison to our little Madelon, and she could only wait and
cherish her purpose till a happier moment.

She heard twice from Graham in the first few months. He wrote
just before leaving England, and once from the Crimae; but
this last letter elicited an icy response from the Superior,
to the effect generally that her niece being now under her
care, and receiving the education that would fit her for the
life that would be hers for the future, she wished all old
connections and associations to be broken off; in short, that
it would be useless for Graham to write any more letters, as
Madelon would not be allowed to see them. Graham received this
letter at Balaklava, at the end of a long day's work, and
laughed out loud as he read the stiff, formal little epistle,
which, to the young man in the midst of the whirl and bustle
of camps and hospitals, seemed like a voice from another
world; there was something too ludicrous in the notion of a
child of eleven years old being forbidden to receive letters,
because she might possibly be a nun nine or ten years hence.

"As for that, we'll see about it by-and-by, old lady," he said
to himself, "but in the meantime there is no use in writing
letters that are not to be delivered;" and then he thrust
Mademoiselle Linders' letter into his pocket, and thought no
mor