Yet to the timorous Madame Delphine many trifles became, one after another, an impediment to the making of this proposal, and many weeks elapsed before further delay was positively without excuse. But at length, one day in May, 1822, in a small private office behind Monsieur Vignevielle's banking-room,--he sitting beside a table, and she, more timid and demure than ever, having just taken a chair by the door,--she said, trying, with a little bashful laugh, to make the matter seem unimportant, and yet with some tremor of voice: "Miché Vignevielle, I bin maguing my will." (Having commenced their acquaintance in English, they spoke nothing else.) "'Tis a good idy," responded the banker. "I kin mague you de troub' to kib dad will fo' me Miché Vignevielle?" "Yez." She looked up with grateful re-assurance; but her eyes dropped again as she said: "Miché 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: "Miché." "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?" "Miché, 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.