My Little Lady | Page 9

behind her back.
"So you have come out too," he said.
"_Mais oui--tout ce tapage m'agace les nerfs_," answered the child, pushing her hair off her forehead with one of her old- fashioned little gestures, and then standing motionless as before, her hands behind her, and her eyes fixed on Graham. Somehow he felt strangely attracted by this odd little child, with her quaint vehement ways and speeches, who stood gazing at him with a look half farouche, half confiding, in her great brown eyes.
"Monsieur," she began, at last.
"Well," said Graham.
"Monsieur, I would like to see the little green fish. May I look at it?"
"To be sure," he answered. "Come here, and I will show it to you."
"And, Monsieur, I do like breloques very much," continues Madelon, feeling that this is a moment for confession.
"Very well, then, you can look at all these. See, here is the little fish to begin with."
"And may I have it in my own hand to look at?" she asked, willing to come to some terms before capitulating.
"Yes, you shall have it to hold in your own hand, if you will come here."
She came close to him then, unclasping her hands, and holding a tiny palm to receive the little trinket.
Horace was engaged in unfastening it from the rest of the bunch, and whilst doing so he said,
"Will you not tell me your name? Madelon, is it not?"
"My name is Madeleine, but papa and every one call me Madelon."
"Madeleine what?"
"Madeleine Linders."
"Linders!" cried Horace, suddenly enlightened; "what, is M. Linders--" the famous gambler he had nearly said, but checked himself--"is that tall gentleman with a beard, whom I saw in the salon just now, your papa?"
"Yes, that is my papa. Please may I have that now?"
He put the little flexible toy into her hand, and she stood gazing at it for a moment, almost afraid to touch it, and then pushing it gently backwards and forwards with one finger.
"It does move!" she cried delighted. "I never saw one like it before."
"Would you like to keep it?" asked Graham.
"Always, do you mean?--for my very own?"
"Yes, always."
"Ah, yes!" she cried, "I should like it very much. I will wear it round my neck with a string, and love it so much, --better than Sophie."
She looked at it with great admiration as it glittered in the moonlight; but her next question fairly took Horace aback.
"Is it worth a great deal of money, Monsieur?" she inquired.
"Why, no, not a great deal--very little, in fact," he replied.
"Ah! then, I will beg papa to let me keep it always, always, and not to take it away."
"I daresay he will let you keep it, if you tell him you like it," said Graham, not clearly understanding her meaning.
"Oh! yes, but then he often gives me pretty things, and then sometimes he says he must take them away again, because they are worth so much money. I don't mind, you know, if he wants them; but I will ask him to let me keep this."
"And what becomes of all your pretty things?"
"I don't know; I have none now," she answered, "we left them behind at Spa. Do you know one reason why I would not dance to-night?" she added, lowering her voice confidentially.
"No; what was it?"
"Because I had not my blue silk frock with lace, that I wear at the balls at Wiesbaden and Spa. I can dance, you know, papa taught me; but not in this old frock, and I left my other at Spa."
"And what were your other reasons?" asked Graham, wondering more and more at the small specimen of humanity before him.
"Oh! because the room here is so small and crowded. At Wiesbaden there are rooms large--so large--quite like this courtyard," extending her small arms by way of giving expression to her vague sense of grandeur; "and looking- glasses all round, and crimson sofas, and gold chandeliers, and ladies in such beautiful dresses, and officers who danced with me. I don't know any one here."
"And who were the Count and the Prince you were talking about to Mademoiselle Sophie in the garden this morning?"
Madelon looked disconcerted.
"I shan't tell you," she said, hanging down her head.
"Will you not? Not if I want to know very much?"
She hesitated a moment, then burst forth--
"Well, then, they were just nobody at all. I was only talking make-believe to Sophie, that she might do the steps properly."
"Oh! then, you did not expect to see them here this evening?"
"Here!" cries Madelon, with much contempt; "why, no. One meets nothing but bourgeois here."
Graham was infinitely amused.
"Am I a _bourgeois?_" he said, laughing.
"I don't know," she replied, looking at him; "but you are not a milord, I know, for I heard papa asking Mademoiselle Cécile about you, and she said you were not a milord at all."
"So you care for nothing