" Yet here, day by day, he was the source of more and more vivid
astonishment to those who held preconceived notions of a banker's
calling. As a banker, at least, he was certainly out of balance; while
as a promenader, it seemed to those who watched him that his ruling idea
had now veered about, and that of late he was ever on the quiet alert,
not to find, but to evade, somebody.
"Olive, my child," whispered Madame Delphine one morning, as the pair
were kneeling side by side on the tiled floor of the church, "yonder is
Miche Vignevielle! If you will only look at once--he is just passing a
little in--Ah, much too slow again; he stepped out by the side door."
The mother thought it a strange providence that Monsieur Vignevielle
should always be disappearing whenever Olive was with her.
One early dawn, Madame Delphine, with a small empty basket on her arm,
stepped out upon the _banquette_ in front of her house, shut and
fastened the door very softly, and stole out in the direction whence you
could faintly catch, in the stillness of the daybreak, the songs of the
Gascon butchers and the pounding of their meat-axes on the stalls of the
distant market-house.
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