The sad little procession moved quietly enough up the stairs, and along the corridor to M. Linders' room. Graham had gone on in front, but Madame Lavaux had held back Madelon when she would have pressed forward by the side of the men who were carrying her father, and she had yielded at first in sheer bewilderment. She had passed through more than one phase of emotion in the course of the last ten minutes, poor child! The first overwhelming shock and terror had passed away, when Graham's reassuring voice and manner had convinced her that her father was not dead; but she had still felt too stunned and confused to do more than obey passively, as she watched him carefully raised, and slowly carried from the hall. By the time they reached the top of the staircase, however, her natural energy began to reassert itself; and, as she saw him disappear within the bedroom, her impatient eagerness to be at his side again, could not be restrained. His recent illness was still too fresh a memory for the mere sight of his present suffering and insensibility to have any of the terrors of novelty, after the first shock was over, and all her former experiences went to prove that his first words on recovering consciousness would be to ask for her. Her one idea was that she must go at once and nurse him; she had not heeded, nor, perhaps, even heard Graham's last words, and she was about to follow the men into the bedroom, when Madame Lavaux interposed to prevent her. "Run upstairs to my room, _petite_," she said; "you will be out of the way there, and I will come to you presently." "No," said Madelon, refusing point-blank, "I am going with papa." "But it is not possible, my child; you will only be in the way. You heard what M. le Docteur said?" "I _will_ go to papa!" cries Madelon, trembling with agitation and excitement; "he will want me, I know he will, I am never in his way! You have no right to prevent my going to him, Madame! Let me pass, I say," for Madame Lavaux was standing between her and the door of the room into which M. Linders had been carried. "_Allons donc_, we must be reasonable," says Madame. "Your papa does not want you now, and little girls should do as they are told. If you had gone to bed an hour ago, as I advised, you would have known nothing about all this till to-morrow. Eh, these children! there is no doing anything with them; and these men," she continued, with a sigh, "the noise they make with their great boots! and precisely Madame la Comtesse, au _premier_, had an _attaque des nerfs_ this evening, and said the house was as noisy as a barrack--but these things always happen at unfortunate moments!"