and summer, and Aunt Barbara
has come for a few weeks before we go home to Cornwall."

"Do you live always in Cornwall?" asked Lady Adelaide. "Have
you never been abroad? Your French and German in singing were
quite perfect, but you seem to me to speak English with a
foreign accent, and a very pretty one too."

"I was born abroad," answered Madelon--"I spent all the first
part of my life on the Continent. I have been in England only
five years."

"Ah, that accounts for it all, then. What part of the
Continent do you come from?"

"I was born in Paris," says unthinking Madelon, "but we--I
travelled about a great deal; one winter I was in Florence,
and another in Nice, but I know Germany and Belgium best. I
was often at Wiesbaden, and Homburg, and Spa."

"Very pretty places, all of them," said Lady Adelaide, "but so
shockingly wicked! It is dreadful to think of the company one
meets there. Did you ever see the gambling tables, my dear?
But I dare say not; you would of course be too young to be
taken into such places."

"Yes, I have seen them," said Madelon, suddenly scarlet.

"My health obliges me to go to these baths from time to time,"
continued the old lady; "but the thought of what goes on in
those Kursaals quite takes away any pleasure I might otherwise
have; and the people who frequent the tables--the women and the
men who go there night after night! I assure you my blood has
run cold sometimes when one of those notorious gamblers has
been pointed out to me, and I think of the young lives he may
have ruined, the young souls he may have tempted to
destruction. I myself have known some sad cases--I am sure you
sympathise with me, Miss Linders?"

"Lady Adelaide," said a portly gentleman, coming up, "will you
allow me to take you into supper?"

"You will not forget to come and see me, my dear," cried Lady
Adelaide, with a parting wave of her fan as she moved away,
leaving the girl sitting there, silent and motionless. People
brushed by her as they left the room, but she paid no heed.
Mrs. Vavasour spoke to her as she passed on her way to supper,
but Madelon did not answer. All at once she sprang up, looking
round as if longing to escape; as she did so, her eyes met
Graham's; he was standing close to her, behind her chair, and
something in his expression, something of sympathy, of
compassion perhaps, made her cheeks flame, and her eyes fill
with sudden tears of resentment and humiliation. He had heard
them