They changed carriages at Pepinster, and, still in the same dream of misery, Madelon followed the Countess from one train to another.  They set off again, but presently, as the slackening speed showed that they were approaching another station, she suddenly woke up to the keenest perception of her situation, with a quickening of her numbed senses to the most vivid realization of all she had lost, of all she might have to endure.  Ah! it was all true, and no dream—­she had run away from the convent to make Monsieur Horace’s fortune; and she had not done it, and now all was over, and she was being taken back to the convent—­and there would be no more chance of escape for her—­never more.  In the agony of this thought she turned towards the Countess, with a half-formed intention of throwing herself at her feet, and imploring, in such voice and accents as should admit of no refusal, to be allowed to go away—­anyhow, anywhere, only as far as possible from Liege.  But she checked herself as she saw that the Countess, with a handkerchief thrown over her face, had comfortably composed herself to sleep in one corner, and a new idea suggested itself as the train stopped at a little village station.  The child glanced towards the woman; she still slept, or appeared to do so, and the next moment Madelon had opened the door, and, taking up her bundle, had slid swiftly and silently out of the carriage.

The train moved on, and a drowsy Countess might presently awake to find with astonishment that she was alone in the compartment; but our little Madelon, left standing on the platform, had slipped out of her sight and knowledge for ever.

CHAPTER XIII.

The Restaurant at Le Trooz.

The train disappeared, and our forlorn little Madelon remained standing alone on the platform.  Forlorn, indeed!  It was raining hard now, a thick, persistent drizzle, through which everything looked dim and blurred, and which was almost as dense as the low-hanging mists that hid the tops of the hills.  Madelon stood still and shivered for a minute, clutching her little bundle under her cloak, and trying to collect her ideas.

Not a hundred yards off was the village, lying between the hills in the next valley to Chaudfontaine, and not more than three miles from that place, but shut out from it by a barrier of rocky, wooded hill, round which there was only just space for the road and stream to wind; an amphibious little village, half in and half out of the water apparently, for it stood just where the stream spread out in wide shallows, round low islands, on and amongst which the houses were clustered and scattered.  Madelon instinctively turned towards it; she had the very vaguest idea in her poor, bewildered little brain as to where she was, or what she was going to do, only one thing obvious in the surrounding uncertainties—­that she could not remain standing on the platform in the pouring