ld, too, the varied life of this
bright, cheerful house, where people were for ever coming and
going, and where children's footsteps were pattering, and
children's voices and laughter ringing, all day long.

It was with the children especially that Madelon made friends
in the early days of her visit. From Mrs. Vavasour she had the
kindliest welcome; but the mistress of this busy household had
a thousand things to attend to, that left her but little time
to bestow on her guest. She had deputed Maria Leslie to
entertain Madelon; but Maria also had her own business--school-
teaching, cottage-visiting in the village; nor, in truth, even
when the two were in each other's society, did they find much
to say to each other. It had never been a secret to Madelon
that Graham was engaged to Maria Leslie, and the girl had
looked forward, perhaps, to making friends with the woman who
was accounted worthy of the honour of being Monsieur Horace's
wife; but the very first day she had turned away disappointed.
There was, both instinctively felt, no common ground on which
they could meet and speak a common language intelligible to
both; memories, interests, tastes, all lay too wide apart; and
as for those larger human sympathies which, wider and deeper
than language can express, make themselves felt and understood
without its medium, something forbade their touching upon them
at all. There was, from the first, a certain coolness and
absence of friendliness in Maria's manner, which was quite at
variance with her usual good-humoured amiability, and which
Madelon felt, but did not understand. She could not guess that
it was the expression of a vague jealousy in Maria's mind,
excited by Madelon's beauty and graciousness of air and
manner, and by a knowledge of her past relations with Horace
Graham; Maria would hardly have acknowledge it to herself, but
it raised an impassable barrier between these two.

As for Graham, no one saw much of him. He was shut up all day
in his brother-in-law's study, writing, copying notes, sorting
and arranging specimens, preparing the book that was to come
out in the course of the next season; and, when he did appear,
at breakfast or dinner, he was apt to be silent and moody,
rarely exchanging more than a few words with any one. Madelon
wondered sometimes at this taciturn Monsieur Horace, so
different from the one she had always known; though, indeed,
in speaking to her the old kindly light would always come