"I meant to," said Lilly with a start, "but getting off in such a hurry, and never wearing them in the morning, I forgot to put them in." "Ah, yes: they are too handsome for morning. You have ze good taste, mademoiselle. Come, now, let us take some coffee together, then we can go over where it is quiet and talk." She took us to an old Frenchwoman's stand, and we each drank a cup of the strong black coffee, which she insisted on paying for. Then we crossed the market to a deserted stall, whose owner had probably sold out her small stock at an early hour and gone home. We sat down, and she began: "You have told me your name. Mine is Gardine--Vera Gardine. I have a brother named Clement Gardine." "C. G.!" cried Lilly. "C. G.," said she with a sigh. "You have perhaps heard of the Gardine family? The old name is well known in ze city." We confessed with some shame that it was unknown to us. She sighed again: "Ah! it is a sad story: I will tell it to you in ze way ze most quickest. We are French, but born in zis country--creoles, you know. I was but a leetle girl when ze war began, and my brother had scarcely twenty years. But he was so brave, so reckless: go to ze war he would, almost breaking ze heart of his--his--fiancee--what you call it in English: his engaged girl--ze gentle, lovely Florine. When ze Northern army came to New Orleans, Florine's father and mother ran away with her to Texas--made of themselves refugees. Soon after both parents died, and Florine was left so all alone that my brother determined to marry her at once. He got a furlough from his general, and came home in disguise. It was joy all mixed with fear to see him. Blockade-steamers were running all ze time from New Orleans to Galveston, and he took passage in one of them. He had no baggages, but one small trunk that I packed for him--his dress-suit, some shirts that I had made, some lace handkerchiefs that I was sending to Florine. In this trunk too were ze star buttons, heirlooms in ze famille Gardine. He was to spend his honeymoon in Texas until his furlough had expired: then he was to bring Florine to me, and he was to go back to his regiment. He left me, brave, strong, full of hope, and from zat time till one long year afterward I neither saw nor heard from mon frere. "I was distracted. I wrote letters here, there, everywhere. It was no use. The city was besieged: I could not get out of it. Oh, what suffering to remember!