That very day, either with or without her consent, Madeline Hazlemere was made Madeline Belleisle; at least, a certain form of marriage was gone through, in the presence of Madame de Fontenay and several strangers, and before a person in the habit of a priest. Madeline had now no power to resist, for the influence of some strange opiate was upon her—dulling all her senses, and making the first few days of her married life pass in a sort of dream.

They travelled for a couple of days; then paused, and lived for a week or so in some quaint little village by the sea. Where it was Madeline did not know; she had not even energy enough to inquire; unresisting, uncomplaining, she was led about like a lamb going to the slaughter. In the morning she walked along the sands by the Frenchman’s side, and dreamily watched the fashionable Parisian bathers disporting themselves in the waves; then she returned home to spend the rest of the day with Madame de Fontenay (who, for some mysterious reason, had never once left the married pair), while Monsieur Belleisle betook himself to the café to spend his evenings in his own favourite way.

It could not be expected that the days would continue to glide thus smoothly along; nevertheless the peace was broken rather sooner than one would have anticipated. One morning, as Madeline rose from the breakfast table and put on her hat for a stroll along the sands, her husband laid his hand upon her arm and drew her into her seat again.

‘Madeline, mon amie! he said in his blandest tone, ‘I wish to arrange with you concerning our domestic life. I should have wished the first advance to come from you; but since that cannot be, since you take so little interest in our menage as to be indifferent to it, it is time for me to speak.’

The girl sat quietly where she had been placed, and fixed her eyes sadly upon the Frenchman. He had used her like a villain, but for the moment the part which he had played was partially or entirely forgotten. She thought only of the man who had first awakened romance within her. Had Monsieur Belleisle spoken kindly, had he infused into his tone and words one-half the tenderness which at one time he had at his command, she might have thrown herself into his arms, with tears of tenderness and sorrow; but his manner chilled her, and her rising tears were checked by the presence of Madame de Fontenay, who sat in the room quietly watching and waiting.

Madeline remained silent; so the Frenchman spoke again—

‘How do you suppose,’ said he, ‘that we are to live, my dear?’

Still Madeline was dumb—what could he mean by asking her such a question?

‘You will write,’ continued Monsieur Belleisle—‘write at once, for enough time has been wasted, to your English guardian—M’sieur White, I think you have called him—and ask him to send you two hundred pounds.’

Still Madeline stared in silence. She was not thinking of the Frenchman now. All her present surroundings faded away, and she saw only the pleasant little studio in St. John’s Wood, with the dearly beloved figure of White standing amidst his brushes, canvas, and paints. But he was not looking genially about him, as she had so often seen him do; his eyes were fixed with a look of sad reproach upon the painted face of a gipsy-like girl of ten, and his voice cried out with a ring of terrible sorrow—

‘Madeline—my little Madeline!’

The girl saw and heard, and in her anguish she dropped her face in her hands and burst into a passionate flood of tears.

They were the first tears she had shed since her marriage. The storm had been long in bursting; but now its violence was intense. For a time she remained utterly prostrated by her sorrow; when she raised her head she saw that the Frenchman was calmly looking on..

‘Is it over?’ he asked.

Madeline did not answer him; she stifled her sobs, dried her eyes, and walked over to the window. The Frenchman followed her with his eyes.

‘You are longing for your morning walk, my wife,’ he said; ‘eh bien, write the letter and you shall go.’

‘I cannot write the letter, M’sieur Belleisle.’

‘Then give me the address of M’sieur White, and I will do so for you, mon amie.’

‘If your only object in writing is to get money,’ remarked Madeline quietly, ‘you may save yourself the trouble, M’sieur—I do not think Mr. White has two hundred pounds in the whole world.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just what I say, M’sieur.’

‘That M’sieur White is a poor man?’

‘Very, very poor——

‘And yet he sent you to the pension of Madame Collemache, and you spread the report in Millefleurs that your English guardian was a great artist and a rich man.’

‘I am sure I did not spread any such report. Mr. White pinched himself to pay for my schooling, and I have repaid him by—by——’

She paused, for Belleisle suddenly interposed with an exclamation so brutal, so coarse and savage, that she stared at him in a new terror.

The outburst over, he sank into a chair, looking positively livid. What could Madeline say or do? She did not know. She stood staring stupidly at the Frenchman until he spoke again. He rose and came towards her, hissing his words through his teeth.

‘If M’sieur White has no money, if you have no money, why then did you run away from your school and marry me?’

‘I ran away from school because I was a foolish, ungrateful, headstrong girl, M’sieur, and I married you because you used cowardly, cruel means and forced me to do so!’

The Frenchman laughed, stretching his long thin mouth from ear to ear.

‘I force you to marry me, and make you a martyr, I suppose?—that is very good. But hear the truth from me, Madame—and unless you are careful, all the world shall know it too. I marry you simply out of pity. I am seduced by you to carry you off from school, and then, out of pity for you, I marry you and save you; yes, I sacrifice myself by taking a wife whose fame is gone—and then, when I look for a little help from you, you say “I give you none——-”’

He ended with an expletive which made the girl’s cheek burn with shame, and brought her trembling to her feet, with wrathful flame in her great blue eyes. For a moment he shrank before her.

‘Do not try grand airs with me. Madame—you had better think how you are to live!——’ and, with another oath, he hurriedly left the room.

All this while Madame Fontenay had kept her seat; but though her body had been inactive, her tongue silent, her eyes had done enough for all.

During the whole of the preceding interview they had been fixed with calm, cold scrutiny on Madeline’s face. She had noted every flush on her cheek, every curve of the lip, every look that was shot from the tearful eyes; finally, her cold grey orbs were fixed more steadily than ever upon the girl as she stood watching the door which had just been closed upon the enraged husband.

‘Mon Dieu!’ mentally exclaimed Madame de Fontenay, ‘the girl is superb, is magnificent—a face like that should be fortune enough for any man!’

She rose from her seat and went over to Madeline.

‘My poor child,’ she said, ‘this is your first quarrel, let us hope it will be your last. Emile Belleisle is a fool and a brute this morning—but he is not always so. Do not grieve, ma chère, or your good looks will leave you. I will reprove him for his insolence, and he—well, he shall make amends!’ and she followed her accomplice, leaving Madeline alone.

For a time the girl stood, moveless, speechless, comprehending only in a dull, stupefied manner the reality of all that had passed. Her eyes were tearless, her lips firmly set together, but her hands were trembling and cold as death. She seemed to see the Frenchman’s face before her, she seemed to hear his words; then again there came to her the pitiful refrain from the man whose heart she feared to have broken—

‘Madeline—my little Madeline!’

Again she sank down, crying—ah, what a relief she found in those tears! When they subsided her brain began to work, and she wondered what she must do.

Up to that moment she had sometimes pitied Monsieur Belleisle, if she could not love him. But that was all over; he had slain her pity, and he had not awakened affection. She knew now why the man wooed her, carried her off from school, and by force married her—he fancied her a rich heiress, a girl who would enable him to renounce his slavery of teaching and live in luxury all his days. Had this indeed been the case, Belleisle would have made a tolerably quiet husband; the sudden darkening of his daydreams had turned him into a devil.

Again Madeline thought ‘What shall I do?’ but the answer would not shape itself. The idea of writing to White repelled her, for she remembered the letter which she had sent to him little more than three weeks before—a letter overflowing with eulogiums upon Monsieur Belleisle. She could not write yet—rather let White think her dead than alive to cause him further sorrow. She had made her own bed; come what may, she would lie on it alone.

So she sat, half crying, listening in a vague dreamy way to the traffic in the village street, when the room door suddenly opened, and Monsieur Belleisle returned. At his entrance she raised her head; at the sight of her tormentor she dropped it again, and coldly turned away. He did not approach her—he walked about the room for some minutes; then he sat, and there was silence. How still the room was! Madeline could hear the beating of her heart; her breath came fast and thick: her hands were growing clammily cold; anger, self-pity, resentment, were struggling in her breast, but her quivering lips would not open.

She looked round the room. There sat the Frenchman in his easy-chair, with his eyes fixed gloomily upon the empty hearth. She rose to leave the room; in a moment the man sprang forward and stood in humiliation before her.

‘Madeline, my wife—will you forgive me?’

The girl looked at him in blank amazement. She could not answer him, and he continued—

‘I am a passionate man—I have an uncontrollable temper, but I am not slow to say I am wrong—forgive me, my Madeline, I have wronged you.’

As he spoke he stretched forth both his hands, but she instinctively shrank away. It was well that she could not see the expression of his face as she did so. He bowed before her, and spoke again.

‘Eh bien!’ he said softly—so softly, so meltingly, she could hardly bring herself to believe it to be the same man who had insulted her a little before. ‘Eh bien, I deserve that you should shrink from me, ............