The child answered brightly that her grandfather had indeed mentioned mademoiselle Sarpy's name and told her how good she had been to him and how she had promised to be her friend. Both Zulma and Blanche being now perfectly at ease, our old acquaintance Velours testified her satisfaction at this issue of affairs by curving her long back and rubbing herself against the hem of Zulma's cloak. Blanche gave her visitor a seat, helped her to take off her furs, and soon the two were engaged in earnest discourse. Zulma looked around the room and moved about to examine the many articles of its quaint furniture. This afforded her the opportunity of asking many questions, to all of which Blanche returned the most intelligent answers. Indeed, the child gave proofs of very remarkable intelligence. There was patent in her a wisdom far beyond her years. It was something different from the usual precocity, because the range of her information was limited enough, and there was sufficient simplicity in her discourse to eliminate that feeling of anxiety and pain which we always experience in the presence of abnormally developed children. Zulma made her tell all about her grandfather, and thus learned curious details concerning a character which she intensely admired, notwithstanding the mystery which was set like a seal upon it--a mystery which Blanche's unconscious revelations rendered only deeper and more provokingly interesting. She spoke to the child, too, of her godmother, Pauline, and it was a delight to learn from those truthful lips how much more loveable her dear friend was than she had ever suspected. Zulma felt that her visit was more than repaid by the insight she thus gained into the characters of Pauline and Batoche. Then she broached higher things. She spoke of God and religion. The untutored child of the forest rose with the occasion. There was nothing conventional in her mind or words on these topics--as how could there be under the wayward teaching of Batoche? But her intuitions were crystal clear. There were no breaks, no obscurations in her spiritual vision. It was evident that she had studied and communed direct with nature, and that her soul had grown in literal contact with the winds and the flowers, the trees and the water courses, and the pure untrammelled elements of God.