align="right" valign="top">  XIII  

    XXXVIII       XIV       XXXIX       XV       XL       XVI       XLI   The Lost Fortune   XVII       XLII   Mélanie   XVIII       XLIII       XIX       XLIV       XX   The Chapdelaines   XLV       XXI       XLVI       XXII       XLVII       XXIII       XLVIII       XXIV   T. Chapdelaine & Son   XLIX       XXV       L    

The Flower of the Chapdelaines

I

Next morning he saw her again.

He had left his very new law office, just around in Bienville Street, and had come but a few steps down Royal, when, at the next corner below, she turned into Royal, toward him, out of Conti, coming from Bourbon.

The same nine-year-old negro boy was at her side, as spotless in broad white collar and blue jacket as on the morning before, and carrying the same droll air of consecration, awe, and responsibility. The young man envied him.

Yesterday, for the first time, at that same corner, he had encountered this fair stranger and her urchin escort, abruptly, as they were making the same turn they now repeated, and all in a flash had wondered who might be this lovely apparition. Of such patrician beauty, such elegance of form and bearing, such witchery of simple attire, and such un-Italian yet Latin type, in this antique Creole, modernly Italianized quarter--who and what, so early in the day, down here among the shops, where so meagre a remnant of the old high life clung on in these balconied upper stories--who, what, whence, whither, and