standing motionless as before, her hands behind her, and her eyes fixed on Graham. Somehow he felt strangely attracted by this odd little child, with her quaint vehement ways and speeches, who stood gazing at him with a look half farouche, half confiding, in her great brown eyes.

"Monsieur," she began, at last.

"Well," said Graham.

"Monsieur, I would like to see the little green fish. May I look at it?"

"To be sure," he answered. "Come here, and I will show it to you."

"And, Monsieur, I do like breloques very much," continues
Madelon, feeling that this is a moment for confession.

"Very well, then, you can look at all these. See, here is the little fish to begin with."

"And may I have it in my own hand to look at?" she asked, willing to come to some terms before capitulating.

"Yes, you shall have it to hold in your own hand, if you will come here."

She came close to him then, unclasping her hands, and holding a tiny palm to receive the little trinket.

Horace was engaged in unfastening it from the rest of the bunch, and whilst doing so he said,

"Will you not tell me your name? Madelon, is it not?"

"My name is Madeleine, but papa and every one call me
Madelon."

"Madeleine what?"

"Madeleine Linders."

"Linders!" cried Horace, suddenly enlightened; "what, is M. Linders—" the famous gambler he had nearly said, but checked himself—"is that tall gentleman with a beard, whom I saw in the salon just now, your papa?"

"Yes, that is my papa. Please may I have that now?"

He put the little flexible toy into her hand, and she stood gazing at it for a moment, almost afraid to touch it, and then pushing it gently backwards and forwards with one finger.

"It does move!" she cried delighted. "I never saw one like it before."

"Would you like to keep it?" asked Graham.

"Always, do you mean?—for my very own?"

"Yes, always."

"Ah, yes!" she cried, "I should like it very much. I will wear it round my neck with a string, and love it so much, —better than Sophie."

She looked at it with great admiration as it glittered in the moonlight; but her next question fairly took Horace aback.

"Is it worth a great deal of money, Monsieur?" she inquired.

"Why, no, not a great deal—very little, in fact," he replied.

"Ah! then, I will beg papa to let me keep it always, always, and not to take it away."

"I daresay he will let you keep it, if you tell him you like it," said Graham, not clearly understanding her meaning.

"Oh! yes, but then he often gives me pretty things, and then sometimes he says he must take them away again, because they are worth so much money. I don't mind, you know, if he wants them; but I will ask him to let me keep this."

"And what becomes of all your pretty things?"

"I don't know; I have none now," she answered, "we left them behind at Spa. Do you know one reason why I would not dance to-night?" she added, lowering her voice confidentially.

"No; what was it?"

"Because I had not my blue silk frock with lace, that I wear at the balls at Wiesbaden and Spa. I can dance, you know, papa taught me; but not in this old frock, and I left my other at Spa."

"And what were your other reasons?" asked Graham, wondering more and more at the small specimen of humanity before him.

"Oh! because the room here is so small and crowded. At Wiesbaden there are rooms large—so large—quite like this courtyard," extending her small arms by way of giving expression to her vague sense of grandeur; "and looking- glasses all round, and crimson sofas, and gold chandeliers, and ladies in such beautiful dresses, and officers who danced with me. I don't know any one here."

"And who were the Count and the Prince you were talking about to Mademoiselle Sophie in the garden this morning?"

Madelon looked disconcerted.

"I shan't tell you," she said, hanging down her head.

"Will you not? Not if I want to know very much?"

She hesitated a moment, then burst forth—

"Well, then, they were just nobody at all. I was only talking make-believe to Sophie, that she might do the steps properly."

"Oh! then, you did not expect to see them here this evening?"

"Here!" cries Madelon, with much contempt; "why, no. One meets nothing but bourgeois here."

Graham was infinitely amused.

"Am I a bourgeois?" he said, laughing.

"I don't know," she replied, looking at him; "but you are not a milord, I know, for I heard papa asking Mademoiselle Cécile about you, and she said you were not a milord at all."

"So you care for nothing but Counts and Princes?"

"I don't know," she said again. Then with an evident sense that such abstract propositions would involve her beyond her depth, she added, "Have you any other pretty things to show me? I should like to see what else you have on your chain."

In five minutes more they were fast friends, and Madelon, seated on Graham's knee, was chattering away, and recounting to him all the history of her short life. He was not long in perceiving that her father was the beginning and end of all her ideas—her one standard of perfection, the one medium through which, small as she was, she was learning to look out on and estimate the world, and receiving her first impressions of life. She had no mother, she said, in answer to Graham's inquiries. Maman had died when she was quite a little baby; and though she seemed to have some dim faint recollection of having once lived in a cottage in the country, with a woman to take care of her, everything else referred to her father, from her first, vague floating memories to the time when she could date them as distinct and well-defined, facts. She had once had a nurse, she said, —a long time ago that was, when she was little—but papa did not like her, and so she went away; and now she was too big for one. Papa did everything for her, it appeared, from putting her to sleep at night, when Mademoiselle was disposed to be wakeful, to nursing her when she was ill, taking her to fêtes on grand holidays, buying her pretty things, walking with her, teaching her dancing, and singing, and reading; and she loved him so much—ah! so much! Indeed, in all the world, the child had but one object for a child's boundless powers of trust and love and veneration, and that one was her father.

"And where do you generally live now?" asked Graham.

"Why, nowhere in particular," Madelon answered. "Of course not—they were always travelling about. Papa had to go to a great many places. They had come last from Spa, and before that they had been at Wiesbaden and Homburg, and last winter they had spent at Nice: and now they were on their way to Paris."

"And do you and your papa always live alone? Have you not an uncle?" enquired Graham, remembering the Belgian's speech about the brother-in-law.

"Oh! yes, there is Uncle Charles—he comes with us generally; but sometimes he goes away, and then I am so glad."

"How is that? are you not fond of him?"

"No," said Madelon, "I don't like him at all; he is very disagreeable, and teases me. And he is always wanting me to go away; he says,