:

"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 silence.

"I suppose you will want to see my lill' girl?"

He smiled; for she looked at him as if she would implore him to decline.

"Oh, I tek you' word fo' hall dad, Madame Carraze. It mague no differend
wad she loog lag; I don' wan' see 'er."

Madame Delphine's parting smile--she went very shortly--was gratitude
beyond speech.

Monsieur Vignevielle returned to the seat he had left, and resumed a
newspaper,--the _Louisiana Gazette_ in all probability,--which he had
laid down upon Madame Delphine's entrance. His eyes fell upon a
paragraph which had previously escaped his notice. There they rested.
Either he read it over and over unwearyingly, or he was lost in thought.
Jean Thompson entered.

"Now," said Mr. Thompson, in a suppressed tone bending a little across
the table, and laying one palm upon a package of papers which lay in the
other, "it is completed. You could retire, from your business any day
inside of six hours without loss to anybody." (Both here and elsewhere,
let it be understood that where good English is given the words were
spoken in good French.)

Monsieur Vignevielle raised his eyes and extended the newspaper to the
attorney, who received it and read the paragraph. Its substance was that
a certain vessel of the navy had returned from a cruise in the Gulf o