Project Gutenberg's The Flower of the Chapdelaines, by George W. Cable

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Title: The Flower of the Chapdelaines

Author: George W. Cable

Release Date: May 23, 2005 [EBook #15881]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLOWER OF THE CHAPDELAINES ***

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: Yesterday, for the first time, at that same corner, he
had encountered this fair stranger and her urchin escort.]

THE FLOWER OF THE CHAPDELAINES

BY

GEORGE W. CABLE

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY

F. C. YOHN

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1918

COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published March, 1918

The Flower of the Chapdelaines

I

Next morning he saw her again.

He had left his very new law office, just around in Bienville Street,
and had come but a few steps down Royal, when, at the next corner
below, she turned into Royal, toward him, out of Conti, coming from
Bourbon.

The same nine-year-old negro boy was at her side, as spotless in broad
white collar and blue jacket as on the morning before, and carrying the
same droll air of consecration, awe, and responsibility. The young man
envied him.

Yesterday, for the first time, at that same corner, he had encountered
this fair stranger and her urchin escort, abruptly, as they were making
the same turn they now repeated, and all in a flash had wondered who
might be this lovely apparition. Of such patrician beauty, such
elegance of form and bearing, such witchery of simple attire, and such
un-Italian yet Latin type, in this antique Creole, modernly Italianized
quarter--who and what, so early in the day, down here among the shops,
where so meagre a remnant of the old high life clung on in these
balconied upper stories--who, what, whence, whither, and wherefore?

In that flash of time she had passed, and the very liveliness of his
interest, combined with the urchin's consecrated awe--not to mention
his own mortifying remembrance of one or two other-day lapses from the
austerities of the old street--restrained him from a backward glance
until he could cross the way as if to