," 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 pur_pose_ 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 under-tone:

"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,
and one day--may be a fortnight after her tearful interview with Pere
Jerome--she found it necessary to get one of these changed into small
money. She was in the Rue Toulouse, looking from one side to the other
for a bank which was not in that street at all, when she noticed a small
sign hanging above a door, bearing the name "Vignevielle." She looked
in. Pere Jerome had told her (when she had gone to him to ask where she
should apply for change) that if she could only wait a few days, there
would be a new concern opened in Toulouse street,--it really seemed as
if Vignevielle was the name, if she could judge; it looked to be, and it
was, a private banker's,--"U. L. Vignevielle's," according to a larger
inscription which met her eyes as she ventured in. Behind the counter,
exchanging some last words with a busy-mannered man outside, who, in
withdrawing, seemed bent on running over Madame Delphine, stood the man
in blue cottonade, whom she had met in Pere Jerome's door-way. Now, for
the first time, she saw his face, its strong, grave, human kindness
shining softly on each and every bronzed feature. The recognition was
mutual. He took pains to speak first, saying, in a re