dame Delphine down into her chair, while Olive threw herself upon
her knees, continuing to cry:

"Oh, my mother! Say you are my mother!"

Madame Delphine looked an instant into the upturned face, and then
turned her own away, with a long, low cry of pain, looked again, and
laying both hands upon the suppliant's head, said:

"_Oh, chere piti a moin, to pa' ma fie!_" (Oh, my darling little one,
you are not my daughter!) Her eyes closed, and her head sank back; the
two gentlemen sprang to her assistance, and laid her upon a sofa
unconscious.

When they brought her to herself, Olive was kneeling at her head
silently weeping.

"_Maman, chere maman_!" said the girl softly, kissing her lips.

"_Ma courri c'ez moin_" (I will go home), said the mother, drearily.

"You will go home with me," said Madame Varrillat, with great kindness
of manner--"just across the street here; I will take care of you till
you feel better. And Olive will stay here with Madame Thompson. You will
be only the width of the street apart."

But Madame Delphine would go nowhere but to her home. Olive she would
not allow to go with her. Then they wanted to send a servant or two to
sleep in the house with her for aid and protection; but all she would
accept was the transient service of a messenger to invite two of her
kinspeople--man and wife--to come and make their dwelling with her.

In course of time these two--a poor, timid, helpless, pair--fell heir to
the premises. Their children had it after them; but, whether in those
hands or these, the house had its habits and continued in them; and to
this day the neighbors, as has already been said, rightly explain its
close-sealed, uninhabited look by the all-sufficient statement that the
inmates "is quadroons."

CHAPTER XV.

KYRIE ELEISON.

The second Saturday afternoon following was hot and calm. The lamp
burning before the tabernacle in Pere Jerome's little church might have
hung with as motionless a flame in the window behind. The lilies of St.
Joseph's wand, shining in one of the half opened panes, were not more
completely at rest than the leaves on tree and vine without, suspended
in the slumbering air. Almost as still, down under the organ-gallery,
with a single band of light falling athwart his box from a small door
which stood ajar, sat the little priest, behind the lattice of the
confessional, silently wiping away the sweat that beaded on his brow and
rolled down his face. At dist