But only a few days later, as White sat alone in the studio working at the scenario of a new play, the door was thrown open and in rushed Madeline. Her hair was dishevelled, her dress disordered, her whole face distorted with passion. Before he had time to speak she threw herself on a sofa and burst into an agony of tears.

‘Madeline!’ he cried, bending over her, ‘what is the matter? Why are you not at school?’

For a time there was no answer, but at last, between the sobs, the girl spoke—

‘Oh! take me home; let me go back to Grayfleet!’

White took her hand softly, and spoke to her soothingly, but his gentleness only made her worse. At last he yielded to his irritation and insisted on an explanation.

Drying her eyes she sat up and looked at him, and he was startled by the white determination in her delicate face.

‘Why are you not at school?’ he repeated.

‘Because I’ve left, and I’ll never go back to school again.’

‘Madeline!’

‘It’s true, and I want to go home, I won’t stay here, and I won’t go back to school.’

‘But what has happened?7

Madeline gave a wild hysterical laugh, and her face assumed an expression of exultation.

‘I struck her in the face, Mr. White, and I pulled down her hair, and when she saw I was angry she was frightened and screamed. If I had been stronger, I would have killed her—I would! I would!’

Completely perplexed by this enigmatical tirade, White quietly took his hat and walked off to the young ladies’ seminary, which was only a few streets away. Arrived there, he found everything in commotion and the lady superintendent highly indignant.

It appeared, on explanation, that Madeline, for some reason unexplained, had, during the midday play hour, made a savage attack upon a young lady of sixteen, a parlour boarder excellently connected; had sprung upon her with fury, scratched her face, and had clung to her until torn away by force. The superintendent’s mind was made up: Madeline must not return to the school.

‘She is a very violent child. I have again and again had to rebuke her for fits of passion. I have now discovered, moreover, that her connections are not what I should wish in members of my seminary. Miss de Castro, whom she assaulted, is a sweet girl, incapable of provocation. Her papa is in the India Office. She is niece of Sir Michael de Castro, late Governor of Chickerabad, and I cannot have her assaulted by a common child.’

White stared silently at the lady, and without a word strode back to the studio. There, with a severity unusual to him, he demanded a full explanation. He thus learned that the fons et origo of all the mischief was Uncle Luke’s letter. By some accident it had fallen from Madeline’s bosom and been picked up by Miss de Castro. That ‘sweet girl’ had read it through to a group of the elder pupils, doing full justice to the orthography, and mimicking, as far as she could imagine them, the living manners of the writer. In the midst of her amusement, Madeline had appeared and demanded her property, which Miss de Castro immediately thrust behind her back, while she indulged in a series of witticisms at the expense of Madeline and all her relations, especially the country correspondent. This was enough. Almost before she herself knew it Madeline was at her throat, and in a white heat of passion. The sweet girl screamed. Madeline was torn away and thrust violently out of the school-yard gate, but not before she had recovered her uncle’s letter and thrust it into her bosom. Then she had flown home.

White was greatly perplexed how to act. In his secret heart he sided with the child, and cursed the cruelty of ignorance and caste; but he nevertheless perceived that fits of passion and violence were not to be encouraged. So he frowned terribly, and read Madeline a long and stern lecture on the wickedness of giving up to wrath.

She heard him out with great attention, and with her great eyes fixed pathetically on his. At the conclusion of the harangue, she took out Uncle Luke’s letter and quietly kissed it—then smiled faintly through her tears at the thought of her wrongs. It was clear that she was quite impenitent.

Madeline did not go back to school. For some months she remained at home with the De Bernys; White, in his indolent way, postponing the question of where she was to go next.

He was a good deal occupied at this time with the adaptation of a new play which was being acted with great success at the Porte St. Martin, and, as it was necessary to see the play represented by the French actors, he spent some weeks in Paris. He discovered that by carefully lopping the leading idea, making the chief female virtuous instead of vicious, altering the scenes, and turning the moral upside down, he could make the great drama pure enough for the sight of the British playgoer. His English manager approved, sent him a small cheque on account, and begged him ‘to do the trick’ as quickly as possible.

At this period, therefore, Madeline was thrown more and more into the society of Mademoiselle Mathilde. That vision of loveliness found the child useful, sent her on endless errands, made of her a sort of companion in miniature, and extempore lady’s maid. Madeline was only too delighted to serve and worship, and great was her joy when any of the cast-off splendour fell to her share. One evening Madame de Berny took her to the theatre, on the occasion of her daughter’s ‘benefit.’ There was a serio-comedy in which Mathilde played the leading part, and a burlesque to follow, in which (for that occasion only, for she generally despised burlesque) she enacted a fairy prince. Madeline was entranced; the spell of the footlights came upon her once and for ever.

That night, after they had returned home, and the Vision had supped well on oysters and bottled stout, Madeline proffered a request which had lately become a very common one with her,

‘Oh, Mamzelle, let me brush your hair!’

Mathilde took a sleepy sensuous pleasure in that part of her toilette, and would sit by the hour together under the soothing manipulation of the brush. So she let down her golden locks, and placed herself, with her eyes half closed, before the mirror, while Madeline began her task, prattling between whiles of the theatre, of all the wonders she had seen, and of the longing that would possess her until she saw them again.

‘I used to feel like you once,’ yawned Mathilde, ‘when I was a dear little thing, with my hair growing down to my waist, and little satin shoes on my feet, and Pa used to take me to the pantomimes. Ah, dear, that’s over and done. I hate the theatre.’

‘You hate it, Mamzelle?’

‘Yes, and sometimes I hate Pa for ever letting me go nigh to it. I suppose it all comes of Ma marrying a Frenchman; for Pa used to teach me to say those long speeches in rhyme out of the French plays, and then I got a taste for recitation. But I hate French now, and I hate the theatre. It’s nothing but worry and vexation. There was only five pounds ten in the stalls to-night besides the tickets Pa and Ma sold, and the dress circle was not half full. Did you notice a dark fat man in a private box, who threw ............