Dawn breaks, and almost with the first streak of daybreak the train comes to a stand again, and Madeline is assisted out. Again she tries to speak, but her low faint murmurs are lost amidst the bustle, the confusion, the loud cries of the railway officials. She is hurried through the crowd into a carriage, and before she can collect her wandering senses to protest she is again being whirled rapidly onward. A drive of some minutes; then the carriage passes through a narrow street and stops before a door. Madeline is taken from the carriage, conducted up a flight of stone steps into a finely furnished room. A man is standing before her. At the sight of his face her dulled senses seem suddenly to brighten. She utters two words, his name-- ‘Monsieur Belleisle!’ The Frenchman bows, smiles, and extends both his hands toward her. ‘Madeline,’ he says, ‘welcome, _mon ange!_’ With a cry Madeline shrinks back, her soul sickens, her dim wandering eyes begin to dilate with fear. She presses both her hands to her throbbing temples, and stares at the Frenchman again. ‘Why are _you_ here, M’sieur?’ she says hurriedly; ‘what has been done to me--where am I?’ The Frenchman bows again. ‘They have brought you to me, _mon ange,_ he says. ‘You are in the house of my very good friend, Madame de Fontenay.’ There is something in his face which causes Madeline to shrink back with horror; then, with, a low cry, she covers her face with her hands and falls in a swoon upon the floor. CHAPTER XIII.--MADELINE AWAKES FROM HER DREAM. That very day, either with or without her consent, Madeline Hazlemere was made Madeline Belleisle; at least, a certain form of marriage was gone through, in the presence of Madame de Fontenay and several strangers, and before a person in the habit of a priest. Madeline had now no power to resist, for the influence of some strange opiate was upon her--dulling all her senses, and making the first few days of her married life pass in a sort of dream. They travelled for a couple of days; then paused, and lived for a week or so in some quaint little village by the sea. Where it was Madeline did not know; she had not even energy enough to inquire; unresisting, uncomplaining, she was led about like a lamb going to the slaughter. In the morning she walked along the sands by the Frenchman’s side, and dreamily watched the fashionable Parisian bathers disporting themselves in the waves; then she returned home to spend the rest of the day with Madame de Fontenay (who, for some mysterious reason, had never once left the married pair), while Monsieur Belleisle betook himself to the café to spend his evenings in his own favourite way.