ville turned to engage in conversation with an employe and
a new visitor, and gave no sign of hearing Madame Delphine's voice. She
asked a second time, with like result, lingered timidly, and as he
turned to give his attention to a third visitor, reiterated:

"Miche Vignevielle, I wizh you pliz led"--

"Madame Carraze," he said, turning so suddenly as to make the frightened
little woman start, but extending his palm with a show of frankness, and
assuming a look of benignant patience, "'ow I kin fine doze note now,
mongs' all de rez? Iv you p'iz nod to mague me doze troub'."

The dimmest shadow of a smile seemed only to give his words a more
kindly authoritative import, and as he turned away again with a manner
suggestive of finality, Madame Delphine found no choice but to depart.
But she went away loving the ground beneath the feet of Monsieur U.L.
Vignevielle.

"Oh, Pere Jerome!" she exclaimed in the corrupt French of her caste,
meeting the little father on the street a few days later, "you told the
truth that day in your parlor. _Mo conne li a c't heure_. I know him
now; he is just what you called him."

"Why do you not make him _your_ banker, also, Madame Delphine?"

"I have done so this very day!" she replied, with more happiness in her
eyes than Pere Jerome had ever before seen there.

"Madame Delphine," he said, his own eyes sparkling, "make _him_ your
daughter's guardian; for myself, being a priest, it would not be best;
but ask him; I believe he will not refuse you."

Madame Delphine's face grew still brighter as he spoke.

"It was in my mind," she said.

Yet to the timorous Madame Delphine many trifles became, one after
another, an impediment to the making of this proposal, and many weeks
elapsed before further delay was positively without excuse. But at
length, one day in May, 1822, in a small private office behind Monsieur
Vignevielle's banking-room,--he sitting beside a table, and she, more
timid and demure than ever, having just taken a chair by the door,--she
said, trying, with a little bashful laugh, to make the matter seem
unimportant, and yet with some tremor of voice:

"Miche Vignevielle, I bin maguing my will." (Having commenced their
acquaintance in English, they spoke nothing else.)

"'Tis a good idy," responded the banker.

"I kin mague you de troub' to kib dad will fo' me Miche Vignevielle?"

"Yez."

She looked up with grateful re-assurance; but her eyes dropped again as
she said