The only object to be seen on the corner from which she had vanished was a small, yellow-washed house much like the one Aurora occupied, as it was like hundreds that then characterized and still characterize the town, only that now they are of brick instead of adobe.  They showed in those days, even more than now, the wide contrast between their homely exteriors and the often elegant apartments within.  However, in this house the front room was merely neat.  The furniture was of rude, heavy pattern, Creole-made, and the walls were unadorned; the day of cheap pictures had not come.  The lofty bedstead which filled one corner was spread and hung with a blue stuff showing through a web of white needlework.  The brazen feet of the chairs were brightly burnished, as were the brass mountings of the bedstead and the brass globes on the cold andirons.  Curtains of blue and white hung at the single window.  The floor, from habitual scrubbing with the common weed which politeness has to call Helenium autumnale, was stained a bright, clean yellow.  On it were, here and there in places, white mats woven of bleached palmetto-leaf.  Such were the room’s appointments; there was but one thing more, a singular bit of fantastic carving,—­a small table of dark mahogany supported on the upward-writhing images of three scaly serpents.

Aurora sat down beside this table.  A dwarf Congo woman, as black as soot, had ushered her in, and, having barred the door, had disappeared, and now the mistress of the house entered.

February though it was, she was dressed—­and looked comfortable—­in white.  That barbaric beauty which had begun to bud twenty years before was now in perfect bloom.  The united grace and pride of her movement was inspiring but—­what shall we say?—­feline?  It was a femininity without humanity,—­something that made her, with all her superbness, a creature that one would want to find chained.  It was the woman who had received the gold from Frowenfeld—­Palmyre Philosophe.

The moment her eyes fell upon Aurora her whole appearance changed.  A girlish smile lighted up her face, and as Aurora rose up reflecting it back, they simultaneously clapped hands, laughed and advanced joyously toward each other, talking rapidly without regard to each other’s words.

“Sit down,” said Palmyre, in the plantation French of their childhood, as they shook hands.

They took chairs and drew up face to face as close as they could come, then sighed and smiled a moment, and then looked grave and were silent.  For in the nature of things, and notwithstanding the amusing familiarity common between Creole ladies and the menial class, the unprotected little widow should have had a very serious errand to bring her to the voudou’s house.

“Palmyre,” began the lady, in a sad tone.

“Momselle Aurore.”

“I want you to help me.”  The former mistress not only cast her hands into her lap, lifted her eyes supplicatingly and dropped them again, but actually locked her fingers to keep them from trembling.