ttle heart
whenever she thought of her wayward charge. And so, when, two
days later, a letter, with neither date nor signature, but
bearing a Paris post-mark, arrived for the Superior,
announcing that Mademoiselle Madeleine Linders was with
friends, and that it was useless for any one to attempt to
find her or reclaim her, for they had her in safe keeping, and
would never consent to part with her, every one felt that the
matter was arranged in the most satisfactory manner possible,
and troubled themselves no more.

As for the Countess G----, there had been a flatness about the
termination of her share in Madelon's adventures that
effectually put a stop to any desire on her part to pursue the
matter further; and finding, on her arrival at Liege, that her
husband was obliged to start for Brussels that very afternoon,
she found it convenient altogether to dismiss the subject from
her mind. With her departure from Liege, we also gladly
dismiss her from these pages for ever.

So Madelon, tossing and moaning on her bed of sickness, is
once more all alone in the world, except for Jeanne-Marie, to
whom, before two days were over, she had somehow become the
one absorbing interest in life. The lonely woman, whose
sympathies and affections had, as one might guess, been all
bruised, and warped, and crushed in some desperate struggle,
or in some long agony, found a new channel for them in an
indescribable, yearning love for the little pale girl whom she
had rescued, and by whose side she sat hour after hour,
wondering, as she listened to her wild broken talk about her
father and Monsieur Horace, Aunt Therese, and Soeur Lucie, what
the child's past life could have been, and by what strange
chances she had come to be in such evil straits. A new world
of hopes and fears, of interests and anxieties, seemed to have
suddenly opened for Jeanne-Marie, as she sat in the little
upper chamber; whilst in the public room downstairs the rough
men, in obedience to her word, sat silently drinking and
smoking, or talking in subdued voices, so that no disturbing
sound might reach the sick child above.

Madelon's second attack of fever was far worse than the first.
Weakened as she was by her former illness, it was an almost
hopeless fight with death that was carried on for days; and
when the crisis came at last, the doctor himself declared that
it was scarcely possible that she should rally, and be
restored to life and reason. But the crisis p