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The young couple went there to live. I have been told they had one of the prettiest places in Louisiana. But there was one thing old De Grapion overlooked: he and his son-in-law were the last of their names. In Louisiana a man needs kinsfolk. He ought to have married his daughter into a strong house. However, he is supposed to have known what he was about.
"Well, ce't'nly 'e did! Di'n' 'e gave dat money to Aurora De Grapion? one 'undred five t'ousan' dolla'? Jis' as if to say, 'Yeh's de money my h-uncle stole from you' 'usban'. Hah! w'en I will swear on a stack of Bible' as 'igh as yo' head, dat Agricole win dat 'abitation fair! If I see it? No, sir; I don't 'ave to see it! I'll swear to it! Hah!"
How many years it was since her grandfather, Georges De Grapion, captain of dragoons, had had his fatal meeting with a Mandarin de Grandissime, she did not remember. There, opposite her on the wall, was the portrait of a young man in a corslet who might have been M. Mandarin himself. She felt the blood of her race growing warmer in her veins.
M. de Grapion, through all that, stood by his engagement concerning Palmyre; and, at the end of ten years, to his own astonishment, responded favorably to a letter from Honoré's sister, irresistible for its goodness, good sense, and eloquent pleading, asking leave to detain Palmyre two years longer; but this response came only after the old master and his pretty, stricken Aurora had wept over it until they were weak and gentle, and was not a response either, but only a silent consent.
Ask Honoré Grandissime; he has seen the little widow; but then he don't know who she is. He will not ask me, and I will not tell him. Oh, yes; it is about eighteen years now since old De Grapion elegant, high-stepping old fellow married her, then only sixteen years of age, to young Nancanou, an indigo-planter on the Fausse Rivière the old bend, you know, behind Pointe Coupée.
Demosthenes De Grapion, himself an only son, left but one son, who also left but one. Yet they were prone to early marriages. So also were the Grandissimes, or, as the name is signed in all the old notarial papers, the Brahmin Mandarin de Grandissimes. That was one thing that kept their many-stranded family line so free from knots and kinks.
At fourteen a necessity which had been parleyed with for two years or more became imperative, and Aurore's maid was taken from her. Explanation is almost superfluous. Aurore was to become a lady and her playmate a lady's maid; but not her maid, because the maid had become, of the two, the ruling spirit. It was a question of grave debate in the mind of M. De Grapion what disposition to make of her.
He began evidently to look, or try to look, for some person; but they could not divine his wish until, with piteous feebleness, he called: "Aurore De Grapion!" So he had known her all the time. Honoré's mother had dropped on her knees beside the bed, dragging Aurora down with her. They rose together. The old man groped distressfully with one hand. She laid her own in it. "Honoré!
"I had to do some prodigious lying at that ball. I didn't dare let the De Grapion ladies know they were in company with a Grandissime." "I thought you said their name was Nancanou." "Well, certainly De Grapion-Nancanou. You see, that is one of their charms: one is a widow, the other is her daughter, and both as young and beautiful as Hebe.
Colonel De Grapion could hardly hope to settle Palmyre's fate more satisfactorily, yet he could not forego an opportunity to indulge his pride by following up the threat he had hung over Agricola to kill whosoever should give Palmyre to a black man. He referred the subject and the would-be purchaser to him.
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