lines. Happily, Madame was not proof against
the habits of the climate, and she retired for her siesta. I sought my
room, almost suffocated by a heat which defies my pen to describe, a heat
reeking with moisture sucked from the foul kennels of the city. I had
felt nothing like it in my former visit to New Orleans. It seemed to
bear down upon my brain, to clog the power of thought, to make me
vacillating. Hitherto my reasoning had led me to seek Monsieur de St.
Gre, to count upon that gentleman's common sense and his former
friendship. But now that the time had come for it, I shrank from such a
meeting. I remembered his passionate affection for Antoinette, I
imagined that he would not listen calmly to one who was in some sort
connected with her unhappiness. So a kind of cowardice drove me first to
Mrs. Temple. She might know much that would save me useless trouble and
blundering.

The shadows of tree-top, thatch, and wall were lengthening as I walked
along the Rue Bourbon. Heedless of what the morrow might bring forth,
the street was given over to festivity. Merry groups were gathered on
the corners, songs and laughter mingled in the court-yards, billiard
balls clicked in the cabarets. A fat, jolly little Frenchman, surrounded
by tripping children, sat in his doorway on the edge of the banquette,
fiddling with all his might, pausing only to wipe the beads of
perspiration from his face.

"Madame Clive, mais oui, Monsieur, l' petite maison en face." Smiling
benignly at the children, he began to fiddle once more.

The little house opposite! Mrs. Temple, mistress of Temple Bow, had come
to this! It was a strange little home indeed, Spanish, one-story, its
dormers hidden by a honeycombed screen of terra-cotta tiles. This screen
was set on the extreme edge of the roof which overhung the banquette and
shaded the yellow adobe wall of the house. Low, unpretentious, the
latticed shutters of its two windows giving it but a scant air of
privacy,--indeed, they were scarred by the raps of careless passers-by on
the sidewalk. The two little battened doors, one step up, were closed.
I rapped, waited, and rapped again. The musician across the street
stopped his fiddling, glanced at me, smiled knowingly at the children;
and they paused in their dance to stare. Then one of the doors was
pushed open a scant four inches, a scarlet madras handkerchief appeared
in the crack above a yellow face. There was a long moment of silence,
during wh