outside, not in the cloister by the door of which she had
entered, but at the top of a wide flight of steps, leading
down to a large sunny Place, surrounded with houses, where a
fair was going on. She was fairly bewildered; she had never
been in the town before, and though, in fact, not very far
from the hotel where she was staying, she felt completely
lost.

As she stood still for a moment, in the midst of the
dispersing crowd, looking scared and dazed enough very likely,
she once more attracted the attention of the little girl who
had been kneeling near her in the church, and who now pointed
her out to her parents, good, substantial-looking bourgeois.

"_Comme elle a l'air drôle_," said the child, "with her hair all
rough, and that old cotton frock!"

"She looks as if she had lost someone," says the kindly
mother. "I will ask her."

"No, she had not lost anyone," Madelon said, in answer to her
inquiries, "but she did not know where she was; could Madame
tell her the way to the Hôtel de l'Aigle d'Or?"

"It is quite near," Madame answered; "we are going that way;
if you like to come with us, we will show it to you."

So Madelon followed the three down the broad steps, and out
into the Place, where she looked a queer figure enough,
perhaps, in the midst of all the gay holiday-folk who were