tered corner amongst some bushes
under a big hawthorn-tree growing on the bank of the river;
and in a few minutes she was again sound asleep, whilst the
mass of snowy blossoms above her head grew rosy in the
sunlight.

It was broad daylight when she awoke again, and sat up rubbing
her eyes, and feeling very chilly, and stiff, and sleepy, but
with a quickly succeeding delight in the bright May morning, a
joyous sense of escape and freedom, of all that she had
accomplished already, and was going to accomplish on this day
to which she had looked forward so long. Everything looked
gold and blue in the early sunlight; the river danced and
sparkled, the poplar-trees were now green, now silvery-grey,
as they waved about in the breeze; the country people were
passing along the road, laughing and chattering gaily in their
queer _patois_. The dark night seemed to have vanished into
indefinite remoteness, like some incongruous dream, which, on
waking, one recalls with difficulty and wonder, in the midst
of bright familiar surroundings. The two years of convent
life, too, seemed to be slipping out of little Madelon's
existence, as if they had never been; she could almost fancy
she had been sleeping all these months, and had awakened to
find all the same--ah! no, not quite the same. Madelon had a
sharp little pang of grief as she thought of her father, and
then a glad throb of joy as she thought of Monsieur Horace--and
then she suddenly discovered that she was horribly hungry,
and, jumping up, she began to walk towards the village.

Not fifty yards from where she had been sleeping stood the
hotel where she had so often stayed, and where she had first
met Horace Graham. There, too, everything was stirring and
awakening into activity--shutters being thrown back, windows
opened, the sunny courtyard swept out. Madelon stood still for
a moment looking on. She wondered whether her old friend,
Mademoiselle Cecile, was still there; she thought it would be
very pleasant to go in and see her, and have some breakfast in
the big _salle-a-manger_, with the pink and yellow paper roses,
and long rows of windows looking out into the courtyard and
garden. But then, she further reflected, breakfasting at an
hotel might probably cost a great deal of money, and she had
so little money to spare; so that on the whole it might be
better to see what she could find in a shop, and she walked
quickly up the village street. Chaudfontaine contains none of