t work very fast; and she
wearied, oh! how she wearied of it sometimes; but she never
wavered in her purpose. "It is for Monsieur Horace," she would
say, and begin again with fresh zeal. Through the open window
of the little kitchen, which looked upon the garden, she could
see Jeanne-Marie coming and going, chopping herbs, shelling
peas and beans; and sometimes, when Madelon was too tired of
her work, she would gladly throw it down, that she might help
in these employments. "May I make an omelette, Jeanne-Marie?"
she would say; "I know how to do it, if you will let me try."
And the sight of Madelon flitting about the kitchen, busy
among the pots and pans, seemed to stir some long-forgotten
emotion in Jeanne-Marie's sad heart--too long-forgotten to be
learnt anew without pain, for her eyes would fill with tears
as she watched her. The child never went into the village, or,
indeed, stirred beyond the garden; that was all the world to
her just now, peopled by Jeanne-Marie, her hopes, and her
embroidery.

Is it most strange or most natural, one wonders, that there
are times when one small nook of earth shuts out, as it were,
the whole universe from our eyes, when one personal interest
occupies us to the exclusion of the whole world of action, and
progress, and speculation, and thought? Thrones may topple
over, nationalities be effaced, revolutions in politics, in
religion, in science be effected, and all pass unheeded while
we sit counting our own private loss and gain in love or
friendship, in grief or joy. Whilst Madelon has been wearying
out her little heart and brain in the pursuit of her self-
imposed task, the world has not been, and is not, standing
still, we may be sure, and her small wheel of life is somehow
kept in motion by the great revolving circle of events,
however little she may think of, or heed them. Sebastopol has
fallen in these last months, the Crimean war is at an end, and
all the world that was discussing battles and sieges when
Horace Graham last parted with Madelon one September
afternoon, is talking of treaties and peace now, as the allied
armies move homewards from the East. And--which indeed would
have had more interest for Madelon could she have known it--
Graham himself, after more than two years' hard work, had been
wounded in one of the last skirmishes; and with this wound,
and the accompanying fever, had lain for weeks very near to
death in the Scutari hospital, to be sent home at last,