he contentment of their
idolised daughter, the absence or presence of la petite Madelaine became
to them a matter of the utmost indifference, and by degrees she became
painfully sensible that there is a wide difference in being accounted
_nobody_ with respect to our individual consequence, or in relation to
our capabilities for contributing, however humbly, to the comfort and
happiness of others. To the first species of insignificance Madelaine
had been early accustomed, and easily reconciled; but the second pressed
heavily on her young heart--and perhaps the more so, at St Hilaire, for
the perpetually recurring thoughts of a time still recent--("the happy
time," as that poor girl accounted it in her scant experience of
happiness)--when she had a friend there who, however his heart was
devoted to her cousin, had never missed an occasion of showing kindness
to herself, and of evincing to her, by those attentions which pass
unnoticed when accepted as a due, but are so precious to persons
situated as was la petite Madelaine, that to him at least her pains and
pleasures, her tastes, her feelings, and her welfare, were by no means
indifferent or unimportant. The dew of kindness never falls on any soil
so grateful as the young heart unaccustomed to its genial influence.
After-benefits, more weighty and important, fail not in noble natures to
inspire commensurate gratitude--but they cannot call forth that burst of
enthusiastic feeling, awakened by the first experienced kindness, like
the sudden verdure of a dry seed-bed called into life and luxuriance by
the first warm shower of spring.

La petite Madelaine's natural home was at no time, as has been observed,
a very happy one to her. And now that it was more her home than for some
years it had been, time had wrought no favourable change in her
circumstances there. Time had not infused more tenderness towards her
into the maternal feelings of Madame du Resnel--though it had worked its
usual effect of increasing the worldliness, and hardening the hardness,
of her nature. Time had not dulcified the tempers of the three elder
Mademoiselles du Resnel, by providing with husbands the two cadettes
between them and Madelaine. And time had cruelly curtailed the few home
joys of the poor Madelaine, by sending le petit frere to college, and by
delivering up to his great receiver, Death--her only other friend--the
faithful and affectionate Jeannette. Of the few that had once loved her
in h