My daughter--oh, Pere Jerome, I bethroath my lill' girl--to a w'ite man!" And immediately Madame Delphine commenced savagely drawing a thread in the fabric of her skirt with one trembling hand, while she drove the fan with the other.

"Dey goin' git marry." On the priest's face came a look of pained surprise.

He slowly said: "Is dad possib', Madame Delphine ?" "Yass," she replied, at first without lifting her eyes; and then again, "Yass," looking full upon him through her tears, "yass, 'tis tru'." He rose and walked once across the room, returned, and said, in the Creole dialect: "Is he a good man--without doubt ?" "De bez in God's world!" replied Madame Delphine, with a rapturous smile.
"My poor, dear friend," said the priest, "I am afraid you are being deceived by somebody." There was the pride of an unswerving faith in the triumphant tone and smile with which she replied, raising and slowly shaking her head: "Ah-h, no-o-o, Miche! Ah-h, no, no! Not by Ursin Lemaitre-Vignevielle!" Pere Jerome was confounded.

He turned again, and, with his hands at his back and his eyes cast down, slowly paced the floor.
"He _is_ a good man," he said, by and by, as if he thought aloud.

At length he halted before the woman.
"Madame Delphine----" The distressed glance with which she had been following his steps was lifted to his eyes.
"Suppose dad should be true w'at doze peop' say 'bout Ursin." "_Qui ci ca ?_ What is that ?" asked the quadroone, stopping her fan.
"Some peop' say Ursin is crezzie." "Ah, Pere Jerome!" She leaped to her feet as if he had smitten her, and putting his words away with an outstretched arm and wide-open palm, suddenly lifted hands and eyes to heaven, and cried: "I wizh to God--_I wizh to God_--de whole worl' was crezzie dad same way!" She sank, trembling, into her chair.