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y to the 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
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