and, moreover, with running down to his sister’s house in the country as often as possible, so as to devote every spare hour to Miss Leslie.  The summer love-making had ended in an engagement before he started for Spa—­an engagement which—­ neither he nor Miss Leslie having any money to speak of—­ promised to be of quite indefinite length.  In the midst of all his bustle, however, Graham contrived to take Madelon to as many sights as could be crowded into the three or four days that they stayed at the London hotel; and in a thousand kind ways tried to encourage and cheer the child, who never said a word about her grief, but drooped more and more as the moment for separation drew near.  Graham went to see her and his aunt off at the Great Western terminus, and it was amidst all the noise, and hurry, and confusion of a railway-station that they parted at last.  It was all over in a minute, and as Graham stood on the platform, watching the train move slowly out of the station, a little white face appeared at a carriage-window, two brown eyes gazed wistfully after him, a little hand waved one more farewell.  It was his last glimpse of our small Madelon.

PART III.

CHAPTER I.

Letters.

For five years Horace Graham was a wanderer on the other side of the Atlantic.  He had left England with the intention of remaining abroad for two years only; but at the end of that time, when the exploring party to which he belonged was returning home, he did not find it difficult to make excuses for remaining behind.  He had only begun to see the country, he said in his letters to England; he knew two men who were going further south, to Paraguay, to La Plata, to Patagonia, perhaps; and he meant to accompany them, and see what was to be seen; time enough to think of coming home afterwards; of what use would it be for him to return just then?  “We are both young,” he wrote to his future wife, Maria Leslie, “and can well afford to wait a year or two before settling down into sober married life.  You, my dear Maria, who so often said this to me when, in the first days of our engagement, I urged a speedy marriage, will, I know, agree with me.  I see now that in those days you were right and I was wrong.  We are not rich enough to marry.  I should do wrong to make you submit to all the trials and hardships which struggling poverty entails; though indeed, in all the world, I know of no one so well fitted to meet them as my dearest Molly.  How often we used to picture to ourselves some little snuggery where you could knit and darn stockings, and I could smoke my pipe!  Is not that the correct division of labour between man and woman?  Well, some day we will have some such dear little hole, and I will smoke my pipe; but you shall not be condemned to stitching—­you shall do—­let me see—­what shall you do?—­anything in the world you like best, my dear girl; for I mean to be a rich man in