the luxuries, and as few as possible of the necessaries of
life, which are for the most part supplied from Liege; but
sour bread is not unknown there, and Madelon having procured a
great, dark tough hunch for her sous, turned back towards the
hotel. She stood outside the iron railing, eating her bread,
and watching what was going on inside; the stir and small
bustle had a positive fascination for her, after her months of
seclusion in the convent. It brought back her old life with
the strangest vividness, joining on the present with the past
which had been so happy; it was as if she had been suddenly
brought back into air and light after long years of darkness
and silence. Through the open door of the hotel she could see
the shadowy green of the garden beyond. Was the swing in which
she had so often sat for hours still there? The windows of the
salon were open too, and there were the old pictures on the
wall, the piano just where it used to stand, and a short,
stout figure, in skirt and camisole, moving about, who might
be Mademoiselle Cecile herself. Presently some children came
running out into the courtyard, with shining hair and faces,
and clean white pinafores, fresh out of the nurse's hands.
Madelon looked at them with a sudden sense of having grown
much older than she used to be--almost grown up, compared to
these small things. She had been no bigger than that when she
had first seen Monsieur Horace. She tried to recall their
first meeting, but in truth she could not remember much about
it; it was so long ago, and succeeding visits had so nearly
effaced the remembrance of that early time, that it was rather
the shadowy memory of a memory, than the reality itself, that
came back to her mind.

Madelon had long finished her breakfast, but, busy with these
recollections, was still lingering outside the courtyard, when
a gentleman and lady came out of the hotel and walked down
towards the gate. The gentleman was stout, black-haired, red-
faced, and good-humoured-looking; the lady elderly, thin, and
freckled, with a much tumbled silk gown, and frizzy, sandy
hair, under a black net bonnet, adorned with many artificial
flowers. In all our Madelon's reminiscences of the past, these
two figures assuredly had no place, and yet this was by no
means the first time they had met at this very hotel. The lady
was the Countess G----, with whom one memorable evening Madelon
had had a grand fight over a roulette board; the gent