have evinced some partiality to poor little Madelaine, even
in the detail of her unsanctioned nuptials, accuse me not, reader, of
making light of the sin of filial disobedience. I have told you that
_she judged herself_;--let you and I do likewise, and abstain from
passing sentence on others. But if your Christian charity, righteous
reader! is so rigidly exacting as to require punishment as well as
penitence, be comforted even on that score, and lay the assurance to
your feeling heart, that la petite Madelaine _had_ her full share of
worldly troubles; the last and crowning one of all, that she was doomed
to be, by some years, the survivor of the husband of her youth--the
friend and companion of her life--the prop and staff of her declining
days.

But she was not long an outcast from her own people and her early home.
"Le petit frere" found means, soon after the attainment of his majority,
and the full rights and titles it conferred on him, as lord of himself
and the Manoir du Resnel, to prevail on his lady-mother (who still
remained mistress of the establishment) to receive, on the footing of
occasional guests, her long-banished child, with her English husband.
From that time, Monsieur du Resnel proved himself, on all occasions, the
affectionate brother and unfailing friend of Walter and Madelaine; and
the good understanding then established between themselves and Madame du
Resnel was never interrupted, though jealousies among the elder sisters
were always at work to undermine it by innumerable petty artifices.
Madame was not their dupe, however. Nature had formed her with a cold
heart, but a strong understanding. She felt and knew that the respect
and attention invariably shown towards her by Madelaine and her husband,
were the fruits of right principle and kindly disposition, unswayed by
any interested consideration, and that her other daughters were actuated
by the sordid view of appropriating to themselves exclusively, at her
decease, the small hoard she might have accumulated in the long course
of her rigid and undeviating economy. As the burden of years pressed
more heavily upon her, she became more and more sensible of the worth
and tenderness of her once-slighted Madelaine; and when circumstances
made it expedient that she should remove from her son's roof, she took
up her last lodging among the living under that of the dutiful child,
whose widowed sorrows were soothed by her tender performance of the
sacred dut