“Without doubt,” echoed Madame Delphine, wearily, still withdrawing backward.  Pere Jerome stepped forward and opened the door.

The shadow of some one approaching it from without fell upon the threshold, and a man entered, dressed in dark blue cottonade, lifting from his head a fine Panama hat, and from a broad, smooth brow, fair where the hat had covered it, and dark below, gently stroking back his very soft, brown locks.  Madame Delphine slightly started aside, while Pere Jerome reached silently, but eagerly, forward, grasped a larger hand than his own, and motioned its owner to a seat.  Madame Delphine’s eyes ventured no higher than to discover that the shoes of the visitor were of white duck.

“Well, Pere Jerome,” she said, in a hurried undertone, “I am just going to say Hail Marys all the time till you find that out for me!”

“Well, I hope that will be soon, Madame Carraze.  Good-day, Madame Carraze.”

And as she departed, the priest turned to the newcomer and extended both hands, saying, in the same familiar dialect in which he had been addressing the quadroone: 

“Well-a-day, old playmate!  After so many years!”

They sat down side by side, like husband and wife, the priest playing with the other’s hand, and talked of times and seasons past, often mentioning Evariste and often Jean.

Madame Delphine stopped short half-way home and returned to Pere Jerome’s.  His entry door was wide open and the parlor door ajar.  She passed through the one and with downcast eyes was standing at the other, her hand lifted to knock, when the door was drawn open and the white duck shoes passed out.  She saw, besides, this time the blue cottonade suit.

“Yes,” the voice of Pere Jerome was saying, as his face appeared in the door—­“Ah!  Madame”—­

“I lef’ my para_sol_,” 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 purpose 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 undertone: 

“He is God’s own banker, Madame Delphine.”