The daughter brought the conversation back to the subject of discussion.

There were nineteen days yet allowed them. G.o.d knows--by the expiration of that time they might be able to pay. With the two music scholars whom she then had and three more whom she had some hope to get, she made bold to say they could pay the rent.

"Ah, Clotilde, my child," exclaimed Aurore, with sudden brightness, "you don't need a mask and costume to resemble your great-grandmother, the casket-girl!" Aurore felt sure, on her part, that with the one embroidery scholar then under her tutelage, and the three others who had declined to take lessons, they could easily pay the rent--and how kind it was of Monsieur, the aged father of that one embroidery scholar, to procure those invitations to the ball! The dear old man! He said he must see one more ball before he should die.

Aurore looked so pretty in the reverie into which she fell that her daughter was content to admire her silently.

"Clotilde," said the mother, presently looking up, "do you remember the evening you treated me so ill?"

The daughter smiled at the preposterous charge.

"I did not treat you ill."

"Yes, don't you know--the evening you made me lose my purse?"

"Certainly, I know!" The daughter took her foot from the andiron; her eyes lighted up aggressively. "For losing your purse blame yourself. For the way you found it again--which was far worse--thank Palmyre. If you had not asked her to find it and shared the gold with her we could have returned with it to 'Sieur Frowenfel'; but now we are ashamed to let him see us. I do not doubt he filled the purse."

"He? He never knew it was empty. It was n.o.body who filled it. Palmyre says that Papa Lebat--"

"Ha!" exclaimed Clotilde at this superst.i.tious mention.

The mother tossed her head and turned her back, swallowing the unendurable bitterness of being rebuked by her daughter. But the cloud hung over but a moment.

"Clotilde," she said, a minute after, turning with a look of sun-bright resolve, "I am going to see him."

"To see whom?" asked the other, looking back from the window, whither she had gone to recover from a reactionary trembling.

"To whom, my child? Why--"

"You do not expect mercy from Honore Grandissime? You would not ask it?"

"No. There is no mercy in the Grandissime blood; but cannot I demand justice? Ha! it is justice that I shall demand!"

"And you will really go and see him?"

"You will see, Mademoiselle," replied Aurore, dropping a broom with which she had begun to sweep up some spilled b.u.t.tons.

"And I with you?"

"No! To a counting-room? To the presence of the chief of that detestable race? No!"

"But you don't know where his office is."

"Anybody can tell me."

Preparation began at once. By and by--

"Clotilde."

Clotilde was stooping behind her mother, with a ribbon between her lips, arranging a flounce.

"M-m-m."

"You must not watch me go out of sight; do you hear? ... But it _is_ dangerous. I knew of a gentleman who watched his wife go out of his sight and she never came back!"

"Hold still!" said Clotilde.

"But when my hand itches," retorted Aurore in a high key, "haven't I got to put it instantly into my pocket if I want the money to come there?

Well, then!"

The daughter proposed to go to the kitchen and tell Alphonsina to put on her shoes.

"My child," cried Aurore, "you are crazy! Do you want Alphonsina to be seized for the rent?"

"But you cannot go alone--and on foot!"

"I must go alone; and--can you lend me your carriage? Ah, you have none?

Certainly I must go alone and on foot if I am to say I cannot pay the rent. It is no indiscretion of mine. If anything happens to me it is M.

Grandissime who is responsible."

Now she is ready for the adventurous errand. She darts to the mirror.

The high-water marks are gone from her eyes. She wheels half around and looks over her shoulder. The flaring bonnet and loose ribbons gave her a more girlish look than ever.

"Now which is the older, little old woman?" she chirrups, and smites her daughter's cheek softly with her palm.

"And you are not afraid to go alone?"

"No; but remember! look at that dog!"

The brute sinks apologetically to the floor. Clotilde opens the street door, hands Aurore the note, Aurore lays a frantic kiss upon her lips, pressing it on tight so as to get it again when she comes back, and--while Clotilde calls the cook to gather up the b.u.t.tons and take away the broom, and while the cook, to make one trip of it, gathers the hound into her bosom and carries broom and dog out together--Aurore sallies forth, leaving Clotilde to resume her sewing and await the coming of a guitar scholar.

"It will keep her fully an hour," thought the girl, far from imagining that Aurore had set about a little private business which she proposed to herself to accomplish before she even started in the direction of M.

Grandissime's counting-rooms.

CHAPTER XIV

BEFORE SUNSET

In old times, most of the sidewalks of New Orleans not in the heart of town were only a rough, rank turf, lined on the side next the ditch with the gunwales of broken-up flatboats--ugly, narrow, slippery objects. As Aurora--it sounds so much pleasanter to anglicize her name--as Aurora gained a corner where two of these gunwales met, she stopped and looked back to make sure that Clotilde was not watching her. That others had noticed her here and there she did not care; that was something beauty would have to endure, and it only made her smile to herself.

"Everybody sees I am from the country--walking on the street without a waiting-maid."

A boy pa.s.sed, hushing his whistle, and gazing at the lone lady until his turning neck could twist no farther. She was so dewy fresh! After he had got across the street he turned to look again. Where could she have disappeared?

The only object to be seen on the corner from which she had vanished was a small, yellow-washed house much like the one Aurora occupied, as it was like hundreds that then characterized and still characterize the town, only that now they are of brick instead of adobe. They showed in those days, even more than now, the wide contrast between their homely exteriors and the often elegant apartments within. However, in this house the front room was merely neat. The furniture was of rude, heavy pattern, Creole-made, and the walls were unadorned; the day of cheap pictures had not come. The lofty bedstead which filled one corner was spread and hung with a blue stuff showing through a web of white needlework. The brazen feet of the chairs were brightly burnished, as were the bra.s.s mountings of the bedstead and the bra.s.s globes on the cold andirons. Curtains of blue and white hung at the single window. The floor, from habitual scrubbing with the common weed which politeness has to call _Helenium autumnale_, was stained a bright, clean yellow.