ertrand
was not there. On Madelon's arrival at the hotel she had found
the excellent old woman ill, and unable to leave her room, and
it was in her bed that she had given the child the warmest of
welcomes, and from thence that she had issued various orders
for her comfort and welfare. Her attack still kept her
confined to her room, and thus it happened that our Madelon,
quite independent, found herself at liberty to come and go
just as she pleased.

She hung up her key, in the deserted little parlour, and,
unchallenged, left the hotel, and went out into the tree-
planted Place, where the band was playing, and people walking
up and down under the chill grey skies. She felt very hopeful
and joyous, so different from the first time she had started
on the same errand, and the fact inspired her with ever-
increasing confidence. She had failed then, and yet here she
was, successful in her last attempts, ready to make another
crowning trial, and with how many more chances in her favour!
Surely she could not fail now!--and yet if she should! She was
turning towards the Redoute, when an idea suddenly occurred to
her--an idea most natural, arising, as it did, from that
instinctive cry for more than human help, that awakes in every
heart on great emergencies, and appealing, moreover, to that
particular class of religious sentiment which in our little
orphaned Madelon had most readily responded to convent
teaching. What if it had been the Holy Virgin Mother who had
been her protector in all these troubles, who had raised her
up friends, and had brought her from death, as it were, to
life again, to fulfil her promise? And if it were so,--which
seemed most probable to Madelon,--would it not be well to
invite her further protection, and even by some small offering
to give emphasis to her prayers? Madelon's notions, it will be
perceived, were not in strict accordance with convent
orthodoxy, which would scarcely have been willing to recognize
the Virgin's help in a successful escape from the convent
itself; but orthodox notions were the last things with which
it was to be expected our Madelon would trouble herself.
Without other thought than that here might be another and sure
way of furthering her one object, she made her way into a
church, and expending two sous in a lighted taper, carried it
to a little side chapel, where, above a flower-decorated
altar, a beneficent Madonna seemed to welcome all sad orphans
in the world to her