soft
brown hair, the slight eyebrows and dark lashes, the lovely
eyes that had learnt to express the thought they had once only
suggested, but still retained something of the old, childish,
wistful look. And yet Graham watched her with a vague sense of
disappointment.

"What do you think of Madeleine?" Mrs. Treherne said to him
the following afternoon; he had come in early, and they were
together alone in the drawing-room. "Do you not find her grown
and improved? Do you think her pretty? She is perhaps rather
pale, but----"

"She has certainly grown, Aunt Barbara, but this is not
astonishing--young ladies generally do grow between the ages of
thirteen and eighteen: and I think her the prettiest girl I
ever saw--not at all too pale. As for being improved--well--I
suppose she is. She wears very nice dresses, I observe, and
holds herself straight, and I daresay knows more geography and
history than when we last parted."

"You are disappointed in her," said Mrs. Treherne. "Do you
know I suspected as much, Horace, from the way in which you
look at her and speak to her. Tell me in what way--why you are
not satisfied?"

"But I am satisfied," cried Graham; "why should I not be?
Madelon appears to me to have every accomplishment a young
lady should have; she sings to perfection, I daresay, dances
equally well, and I have no doubt that on examination she
would prove equally proficient in all the ologies. I am
perfectly satisfied, so far as it is any concern of mine, but
I don't see what right I have to be sitting in judgment one
way or the other."

"You have every right, Horace; I have always looked upon you
as the child's guardian in a way, and in all my plans
concerning her education I have considered myself, to a
certain extent, responsible to you."

"It was very good of you, Aunt Barbara, to consider me in the
matter. I thought my responsibility had ceased from the moment
you took charge of her; but for her father's sake--does Madelon
ever speak of him, by-the-by?"

"Never."

"Never alludes to her past life?"

"Never--we never speak of it; I have carefully avoided doing
so, in the hope that with time, and a settled home, and new
interests, she could cease to think of it altogether; and I
trust I have succeeded. The memory of it can only be painful
to her now, poor child, for, though I have never referred to
the subject in any way, I feel convinced she must have learnt
by this time to see her father's charact