an it be?_ Is this
his quest, or is it lunacy? The ground seems to M. Vignevielle the
unsteady sea, and he to stand once more on a deck. And she? As she is
now, if she but turn toward the orange, the whole glory of the moon will
shine upon her face. His heart stands still; he is waiting for her to do
that. She reaches up again; this time a bunch for her mother. That neck
and throat! Now she fastens a spray in her hair. The mocking-bird cannot
withhold; he breaks into song--she turns--she turns her face--it is she,
it is she! Madame Delphine's daughter is the girl he met on the ship.

CHAPTER IX.

OLIVE.

She was just passing seventeen--that beautiful year when the heart of
the maiden still beats quickly with the surprise of her new dominion,
while with gentle dignity her brow accepts the holy coronation of
womanhood. The forehead and temples beneath her loosely bound hair were
fair without paleness, and meek without languor. She had the soft,
lacklustre beauty of the South; no ruddiness of coral, no waxen white,
no pink of shell; no heavenly blue in the glance; but a face that
seemed, in all its other beauties, only a tender accompaniment for the
large, brown, melting eyes, where the openness of child-nature mingled
dreamily with the sweet mysteries of maiden thought. We say no color of
shell on face or throat; but this was no deficiency, that which took
its place being the warm, transparent tint of sculptured ivory.

This side door-way which led from Madame Delphine's house into her
garden was overarched partly by an old remnant of vine-covered lattice,
and partly by a crape-myrtle, against whose small, polished trunk leaned
a rustic seat. Here Madame Delphine and Olive loved to sit when the
twilights were balmy or the moon was bright.

"_Cherie_," said Madame Delphine on one of these evenings, "why do you
dream so much?"

She spoke in the _patois_ most natural to her, and which her daughter
had easily learned.

The girl turned her face to her mother, and smiled, then dropped her
glance to the hands in her own lap, which were listlessly handling the
end of a ribbon. The mother looked at her with fond solicitude. Her
dress was white again; this was but one night since that in which
Monsieur Vignevielle had seen her at the bush of night-jasmine. He had
not been discovered, but had gone away, shutting the gate, and leaving
it as he had found it.

Her head was uncovered. Its plaited masses, quite black in