"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 but Counts and Princes?"

"I don't know," she said again. Then with an evident sense
that such abstract propositions would involve her beyond her
depth, she added, "Have you any other pretty things to show
me? I should like to see what else you have on your chain."

In five minutes more they were fast friends, and Madelon,
seated on Graham's knee, was chattering away, and recounting
to him all the history of her short life. He was not long in
perceiving that her father was the beginning and end of all
her ideas--her one standard of perfection, the one medium
through which, small as she was, she was learning to look out
on and estimate the world, and receiving her first impressions
of life. She had no mother, she said, in answer to Graham's
inquiries. _Maman_ had died when she was quite a little baby;
and though she seemed to have some dim faint recollection of
having once lived in a cottage in the country, with a woman to
take care of her, everything else referred to her father, from
her first, vague floating memories to the time when she could
date them as distinct and well-defined, facts. She had once
had a nurse, she said, --a long time ago that was, when she was
little--but papa did not like her, and so she went away; and
now she was too big for one. Papa did everything for her, it
appeared, from putting her to sleep at night, when