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Olive repeated the kiss, prolonging it passionately. "I have nobody but you," murmured the girl; "I am a poor quadroone!" She threw back her plaited hair for a third embrace, when a sound in the shrubbery startled them. "Qui ci ça?" called Madame Delphine, in a frightened voice, as the two stood up, holding to each other. No answer.
"Ah!" said Père Jerome, with a shrug, "God knows." "Yes," said the quadroone, with a quick sparkle in her gentle eye; "and I know, if God would tell anybody, He would tell you!" The priest smiled and rose. "Do you think so? Well, leave me to think of it. I will ask Him." "And He will tell you!" she replied. "And He will bless you!" She rose and gave her hand. As she withdrew it she smiled.
And as she departed, the priest turned to the new-comer and extended both hands, saying, in the same familiar dialect in which he had been addressing the quadroone: "Well-a-day, old playmate! After so many years!" They sat down side by side, like husband and wife, the priest playing with the other's hand, and talked of times and seasons past, often mentioning Evariste and often Jean.
If your love was pure and lawful I am sure your angel guardian smiled upon you; and if it was not, I cannot say you have nothing to answer for, and yet I think God may have said 'She is a quadroone; all the rights of her womanhood trampled in the mire, sin made easy to her almost compulsory, charge it to account of whom it may concern."
Olive repeated the kiss, prolonging it passionately. "I have nobody but you," murmured the girl; "I am a poor quadroone!" She threw back her plaited hair for a third embrace, when a sound in the shrubbery startled them. "Qui ci pa?" called Madame Delphine, in a frightened voice, as the two stood up, holding to each other. No answer.
"Qui ci ça? What is that?" asked the quadroone, stopping her fan. "Some peop' say Ursin is crezzie." "Ah, Père 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!"
They rarely saw her save when she went to or returned from church; a small, rather tired-looking, dark quadroone of very good features and a gentle thoughtfulness of expression which would take long to describe: call it a widow's look. In speaking of Madame Delphine's house, mention should have been made of a gate in the fence on the Royal-street sidewalk.
No Père Jerome thanked them he could not sit down. "This, I believe you know, Jean, is Madame Delphine" The quadroone courtesied. "A friend of mine," he added, smiling kindly upon her, and turning, with something imperative in his eye, to the group. "She says she has an important private matter to communicate." "To me?" asked Jean Thompson. "To all of you; so I will Good-evening."
Madame Thompson herself bade the quadroone be seated. "Well?" said Jean Thompson, as the rest took chairs. "C'est drole" it's funny said Madame Delphine, with a piteous effort to smile, "that nobody thought of it. It is so plain. You have only to look and see. I mean about Olive." She loosed a button in the front of her dress and passed her hand into her bosom.
They rarely saw her save when she went to or returned from church; a small, rather tired-looking, dark quadroone of very good features and a gentle thoughtfulness of expression which it would take long to describe: call it a widow's look. In speaking of Madame Delphine's house, mention should have been made of a gate in the fence on the Royal-street sidewalk.
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