lence.

"I suppose you will want to see my lill' girl?"

He smiled; for she looked at him as if she would implore him to decline.

"Oh, I tek you' word fo' hall dad, Madame Carraze. It mague no differend
wad she loog lag; I don' wan' see 'er."

Madame Delphine's parting smile--she went very shortly--was gratitude
beyond speech.

Monsieur Vignevielle returned to the seat he had left, and resumed a
newspaper,--the _Louisiana Gazette_ in all probability,--which he had
laid down upon Madame Delphine's entrance. His eyes fell upon a
paragraph which had previously escaped his notice. There they rested.
Either he read it over and over unwearyingly, or he was lost in thought.
Jean Thompson entered.

"Now," said Mr. Thompson, in a suppressed tone, bending a little across
the table, and laying one palm upon a package of papers which lay in the
other, "it is completed. You could retire from your business any day
inside of six hours without loss to anybody." (Both here and elsewhere,
let it be understood that where good English is given the words were
spoken in good French.)

Monsieur Vignevielle raised his eyes and extended the newspaper to the
attorney, who received it and read the paragraph. Its substance was that
a certain vessel of the navy had returned from a cruise in the Gulf of
Mexico and Straits of Florida, where she had done valuable service
against the pirates--having, for instance, destroyed in one fortnight in
January last twelve pirate vessels afloat, two on the stocks, and three
establishments ashore.

"United States brig _Porpoise_," repeated Jean Thompson. "Do you know
her?"

"We are acquainted," said Monsieur Vignevielle.

CHAPTER VIII.

SHE.

A quiet footstep, a grave new presence on financial sidewalks, a neat
garb slightly out of date, a gently strong and kindly pensive face, a
silent bow, a new sign in the Rue Toulouse, a lone figure with a cane,
walking in meditation in the evening light under the willows of Canal
Marigny, a long-darkened window re-lighted in the Rue Conti--these were
all; a fall of dew would scarce have been more quiet than was the return
of Ursin Lemaitre-Vignevielle to the precincts of his birth and early
life.

But we hardly give the event its right name. It was Capitaine Lemaitre
who had disappeared; it was Monsieur Vignevielle who had come back. The
pleasures, the haunts, the companions, that had once held out their
charms to the impetuous youth, offered no en