ich had worked so well
hitherto, was beginning to totter, ready at any time, it might
be, to fall into ruins, leaving him and his child vainly
calling to each other across an ever-widening, impassable
gulf. Already he foresaw as possible results all that he had
most wished to avoid, and felt himself powerless to avert
them; for, however ready to alienate her from good influences,
and expose her to bad ones, he yet shrank from inculcating
falsehood and wrong by precept. With a boy it would have been
different, and he might have had little hesitation in bringing
him up, by both precept and example, in the way he was to go;
but with his little innocent woman-child--no, it was
impossible. She must be left to the silent and negative
teachings of surrounding influences, and in ignorance of all
others; and what if these should fail? Perhaps he over-
estimated the immediate danger, not taking sufficiently into
account the strength and loyalty of her affection for him;
but, on the other hand, he perhaps undervalued the depth and
force of those feelings to the consciousness of which she had
first been roused that day. "It shall not occur again, and in
time she will forget all about it," was his first conclusion.
His second was perhaps wiser in his generation, taking into
consideration a wider range of probabilities. "No," he
reflected, "there has been an error somewhere. I should have
accustomed Madelon to all these things, and then she would
have thought nothing of them. Well, that shall be remedied,
for she shall go to every church in Florence, and so get used
to them."

CHAPTER VI.

At Florence.

If we have dwelt with disproportionate detail on the above
little incident, we must be forgiven in consideration of its
real importance to our Madeleine, marking, as it did, the
commencement of a new era in her life. The sudden inspiration
that had kindled for a moment in the great church died away,
indeed, as newer impressions more imperatively claimed her
attention; but the memory of it remained as a starting point
to which any similar sensations subsequently recurring might
be referred, as a phenomenon which seemed to contain within
itself the germ and possible explanation of a thousand vague
aspirations, yearnings which began about this time to spring
up in her mind, and which almost unconsciously linked
themselves with that solemn hour the remembrance of which,
after her conversation with her father, she had set apar