"That is what I cannot tell you," said Madelon. "No, I will not tell any one, though I should like to tell you, too," added the poor child, gazing wistfully at almost the only friend she had in the world. "Well, well," said Jeanne-Marie, "I do not want to hear your secrets, as you know, unless you like to tell them; but I am not going to lose sight of you altogether till I hear you are safe with your friends. You must write me a letter from Spa, and if I do not hear or see anything of you in a week's time, I shall come and look after you." "Yes, I will write," said Madelon; "and I wish--I wish I was not going away; I have been so happy here." And then she hid her face on Jeanne-Marie's shoulder, while the sky was all rosy with the sunset of the last of these peaceful summer days that our Madelon was to spend at Le Trooz. Jeanne-Marie could not spare time to go again to Spa the next day, but she went with Madelon to the station, and waited till the train that bore her away was out of sight, and then, all lonely, she walked back to her empty house. CHAPTER XVI. How Madelon kept her Promise. Madelon was standing in a little upper bedroom of the Hotel de Madrid, a room so high up that from the window one looked over the tops of the trees in the Place Royale below, to the opposite hills. It was already dusk, but there was sufficient light to enable her to count over the little piles of gold that lay on the table before her, and which, as she counted, she put into a small canvas bag. It was the third evening after her arrival in Spa; she was preparing for her third visit to the Redoute, and this was what her capital of thirty francs had already produced. The last ten-franc piece disappeared within the bag, and Madelon, taking her hat and cloak, began to put them on slowly, pausing as she did so to reflect. "If I have the same luck this evening," she thinks, "to-morrow I shall be able to write to Monsieur Horace--if only I have--and why not? I have scarcely lost once these last two nights. Certainly it is better to play in the evening than in the daytime. I remember now that papa once said so, and to-night I feel certain--yes, I feel certain that I shall win--and then to- morrow----"