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views. He was careful to keep her within the shady bounds of
that world of no doubtful character, which he found wherever
he went, hovering on the borders of the world of avowed
honesty and respectability, jealously guarding her from every
counter-influence, however good or beneficial. He would not
send her to school, was half unwilling, indeed, that she
should be educated in any way, lest she should come to the
knowledge of good and evil, which he so carefully hid from
her; and he even dismissed her good, kind-hearted bonne, on
overhearing her instruct the child, who could then hardly
speak plain, in some little hymn or prayer, or pious story,
such as nurses delight in teaching their charges. After that
he took care of her himself with the assistance of friendly
landladies at the hotels he frequented, who all took an
interest in and were kind to the little motherless girl, but
were too busy to have any time to spend in teaching her, or
enlarging her ideas; and indeed all the world conspired to
carry out M. Linders' plan; for who would have cared, even had
it been possible, to undertake the ungracious task of opening
the eyes of a child to the real character of a father whom she
loved and believed in so implicitly? And she was so happy,
too! Setting aside any possible injury he might be doing her,
M. Linders was the most devoted of fathers, loving and caring
for her most tenderly, and thinking himself well repaid by the
clinging grasp of her small hand, by the spring of joy with
which she welcomed him after any absence, by her gleeful voice
and laughter, her perfect trust and confidence in him.

There must have been something good and true about this man,
roue and gambler though he was, that, somehow, he himself and
those around him had missed hitherto, but that sprang
willingly into life when appealed to by the innocent faith,
the undoubting love of his little child. Thus much Madelon all
unconsciously accomplished, but more than this she could not
do. M. Linders did not become a reformed character for her
sake: he had never had any particular principles, and
Madelon's loving innocence, which aroused all his best
emotions, had no power to stir in him any noble motives or
high aspirations, which, if they existed at all, were buried
too deep to be awakened by the touch of her small hand. His
misdeeds had never occasioned him much uneasiness, except as
they had affected the conduct of others towards himself; and
h