e Delphine's
eyes ventured no higher than to discover that the shoes of the visitor
were of white duck.

"Well, Pere Jerome," she said, in a hurried undertone, "I am just going
to say Hail Marys all the time till you find that out for me!"

"Well, I hope that will be soon, Madame Carraze. Good-day, Madame
Carraze."

And as she departed, the priest turned to the newcomer and extended both
hands, saying, in the same familiar dialect in which he had been
addressing the quadroone:

"Well-a-day, old playmate! After so many years!"

They sat down side by side, like husband and wife, the priest playing
with the other's hand, and talked of times and seasons past, often
mentioning Evariste and often Jean.

Madame Delphine stopped short half-way home and returned to Pere
Jerome's. His entry door was wide open and the parlor door ajar. She
passed through the one and with downcast eyes was standing at the other,
her hand lifted to knock, when the door was drawn open and the white
duck shoes passed out. She saw, besides, this time the blue cottonade
suit.

"Yes," the voice of Pere Jerome was saying, as his face appeared in the
door--"Ah! Madame"--

"I lef' my para_sol_," said Madame Delphine, in English.

There was this quiet evidence of a defiant spirit hidden somewhere down
under her general timidity, that, against a fierce conventional
prohibition, she wore a bonnet instead of the turban of her caste, and
carried a parasol.

Pere Jerome turned and brought it.

He made a motion in the direction in which the late visitor had
disappeared.

"Madame Delphine, you saw dat man?"

"Not his face."

"You couldn' billieve me iv I tell you w'at dat man purpose to do!"

"Is dad so, Pere Jerome?"

"He's goin' to hopen a bank!"

"Ah!" said Madame Delphine, seeing she was expected to be astonished.

Pere Jerome evidently longed to tell something that was best kept
secret; he repressed the impulse, but his heart had to say something. He
threw forward one hand and looking pleasantly at Madame Delphine, with
his lips dropped apart, clenched his extended hand and thrusting it
toward the ground, said in a solemn undertone:

"He is God's own banker, Madame Delphine."

CHAPTER VII.

MICHE VIGNEVIELLE.

Madame Delphine sold one of the corner lots of her property. She had
almost no revenue, and now and then a piece had to go. As a consequence
of the sale, she had a few large bank-notes sewed up in her petticoat,
an