so, 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:

"Miche Vignevielle----" Here she choked, and began her peculiar motion
of laying folds in the skirt of her dress, with trembling fingers. She
lifted her eyes, and as they met the look of deep and placid kindness
that was in his face, some courage returned, and she said:

"Miche."

"Wad you wand?" asked he, gently.

"If it arrive to me to die----"

"Yez?"

Her words were scarcely audible:

"I wand you teg kyah my lill' girl."

"You 'ave one lill' gal, Madame Carraze?"

She nodded with her face down.

"An' you godd some mo' chillen?"

"No."

"I nevva know dad, Madame Carraze. She's a lill' small gal?"

Mothers forget their daughters' stature. Madame Delphine said:

"Yez."

For a few moments neither spoke, and then Monsieur Vignevielle said:

"I will do dad."

"Lag she been you' h-own?" asked the mother, suffering from her own
boldness.

"She's a good lill' chile, eh?"

"Miche, she's a lill' hangel!" exclaimed Madame Delphine, with a look of
distress.

"Yez; I teg kyah 'v 'er, lag my h-own. I mague you dad promise."

"But----" There was something still in the way, Madame Delphine seemed
to think.

The banker waited in si