man rose slowly from his seat and regarded him steadily with a kind,
bronzed, sedate face, and the sermon, as if by a sign of command, was
ended. While the Credo was being chanted he was still there; but when, a
moment after its close, the eye of Père Jerome returned in that
direction, his place was empty.

As the little priest, his labor done and his vestments changed, was
turning into the Rue Royale and leaving the cathedral out of sight, he
just had time to understand that two women were purposely allowing him
to overtake them, when the one nearer him spoke in the Creole _patois,_
saying, with some timid haste:

"Good-morning, Père--Père Jerome; Père Jerome, we thank the good God for
that sermon."

"Then, so do I," said the little man. They were the same two that he had
noticed when he was preaching. The younger one bowed silently; she was a
beautiful figure, but the slight effort of Père Jerome's kind eyes to
see through the veil was vain. He would presently have passed on, but
the one who had spoken before said:

"I thought you lived in the Rue des Ursulines."

"Yes; but I am going this way to see a sick person."

The woman looked up at him with an expression of mingled confidence and
timidity.

"It must be a blessed thing to be so useful as to be needed by the good
God," she said.