running out into the courtyard, with shining hair and faces,
and clean white pinafores, fresh out of the nurse's hands.
Madelon looked at them with a sudden sense of having grown
much older than she used to be--almost grown up, compared to
these small things. She had been no bigger than that when she
had first seen Monsieur Horace. She tried to recall their
first meeting, but in truth she could not remember much about
it; it was so long ago, and succeeding visits had so nearly
effaced the remembrance of that early time, that it was rather
the shadowy memory of a memory, than the reality itself, that
came back to her mind.

Madelon had long finished her breakfast, but, busy with these
recollections, was still lingering outside the courtyard, when
a gentleman and lady came out of the hotel and walked down
towards the gate. The gentleman was stout, black-haired, red-
faced, and good-humoured-looking; the lady elderly, thin, and
freckled, with a much tumbled silk gown, and frizzy, sandy
hair, under a black net bonnet, adorned with many artificial
flowers. In all our Madelon's reminiscences of the past, these
two figures assuredly had no place, and yet this was by no
means the first time they had met at this very hotel. The lady
was the Countess G----, with whom one memorable evening Madelon
had had a grand fight over a roulette board; the gentleman was
Horace Graham's _quondam_ fellow-traveller, the Countess's old
admirer, and now her husband.

They were talking as they came together down the courtyard,
and Madelon caught the last words of their conversation.