should open out before
her. She learns her lessons, sings in the chapel, knows
something of compote-making, and can embroider with skilful
little fingers almost after Soeur Lucie's own heart. She still
holds aloof from her companions, turning to Soeur Lucie for
society, though rather with the feeling of the simple-hearted
little nun being _bon camarade_, than with any deeper sentiment
of friendship or respect. She is rarely _en penitence_ now; the
vehement little spirit seems laid; and if something of her old
spring and energy have gone with it, if she is sometimes sad,
and almost always quiet, there is no one to note it much, or
to heed the change that has apparently come over her. And yet
Madelon was in truth little altered, and was scarcely less of
a child than when Graham had brought her to the convent. She
had learned a variety of things, it is true; she could have
named all the principal cities in Europe now; and though she
still stumbled over the kings of France, her multiplication-
table was unexceptionable; but her education had been one of
acquisition rather than of development. Her mind had not yet
had time to assimilate itself with those around her, nor to
become reconciled to the life that was so at variance with all
her old traditions; and she maintained a nucleus, as it were,
of independent thought, which no mere extraneous influences or
knowledge could affect. In the total silence imposed upon
herself, and those around her, concerning her past life, there
had been no possibility of modifying her ideas on that
subject, and they were still at the same point as when she
entered the convent. She still clung to her father's memory,
with all the passionate love of which her ardent little soul
was capable; she still believed in his perfection, and held to
her recollections of the old days with a strength and tenacity
only enhanced by the contrast which her present life daily
forced upon her. The past lived in her memory as a bright,
changeful dream, varying from one pleasure to another, with an
ever-shifting background of fair, foreign towns and cities,
Kursaals, palaces, salons, gardens, mountains, and lakes, and
quiet green nooks of country--all, as it seemed to her, with
the power of generalization that seizes on the most salient
points, and takes them as types of the whole, shining in
sunlight that never clouded, under clear blue skies that never
darkened. Madelon knew that that time had gone by for ever