howed distress of mind, it would not be so bad; but his
calmness,--ugly feature."

The attorney had held his ground so long that he began really to believe
it was tenable.

By day, it is true, Monsieur Vignevielle was at his post in his quiet
"bank." Yet here, day by day, he was the source of more and more vivid
astonishment to those who held preconceived notions of a banker's
calling. As a banker, at least, he was certainly out of balance; while
as a promenader, it seemed to those who watched him that his ruling idea
had now veered about, and that of late he was ever on the quiet alert,
not to find, but to evade, somebody.

"Olive, my child," whispered Madame Delphine one morning, as the pair
were kneeling side by side on the tiled floor of the church, "yonder is
Miche Vignevielle! If you will only look at once--he is just passing a
little in--Ah, much too slow again; he stepped out by the side door."

The mother thought it a strange providence that Monsieur Vignevielle
should always be disappearing whenever Olive was with her.

One early dawn, Madame Delphine, with a small empty basket on her arm,
stepped out upon the _banquette_ in front of her house, shut and
fastened the door very softly, and stole out in the direction whence you
could faintly catch, in the stillness of the daybreak, the songs of the
Gascon butchers and the pounding of their meat-axes on the stalls of the
distant market-house. She was going to see if she could find some birds
for Olive,--the child's appetite was so poor; and, as she was out, she
would drop an early prayer at the cathedral. Faith and works.

"One must venture something, sometimes, in the cause of religion,"
thought she, as she started timorously on her way. But she had not gone
a dozen steps before she repented her temerity. There was some one
behind her.

There should not be any thing terrible in a footstep merely because it
is masculine; but Madame Delphine's mind was not prepared to consider
that. A terrible secret was haunting her. Yesterday morning she had
found a shoe-track in the garden. She had not disclosed the discovery to
Olive, but she had hardly closed her eyes the whole night.

The step behind her now might be the fall of that very shoe. She
quickened her pace, but did not leave the sound behind. She hurried
forward almost at a run; yet it was still there--no farther, no nearer.
Two frights were upon her at once--one for herself, another for Olive,
left alone