For Champigny also belonged to the great majority of the _nouveaux
pauvres_. He went out into the rice-field, where were one or two
hands that worked on shares with him, and he asked them. They knew
immediately; there is nothing connected with the parish that a
field-hand does not know at once. She was the teacher of the colored
public school some three or four miles away. "Ah," thought Champigny,
"some Northern lady on a mission." He watched to see her return in the
evening, which she did, of course; in a blinding rain. Imagine the
green barege veil then; for it remained always down over her face.

[Illustration: CHAMPIGNY.]

Old Champigny could not get over it that he had never seen her before.
But he must have seen her, and, with his abstraction and old age, not
have noticed her, for he found out from the negroes that she had been
teaching four or five years there. And he found out also--how, is not
important--that she was Idalie Sainte Foy Mortemart des Islets. _La
grande demoiselle_! He had never known her in the old days, owing to
his uncomplimentary attitude toward women, but he knew of her,
of course, and of her family. It should have been said that his
plantation was about fifty miles higher up the river, and on the
opposite bank to Reine Sainte Foy. It seemed terrible. The old
gentleman had had reverses of his own, which would bear the telling,
but nothing was more shocking to him than this--that Idalie Sainte
Foy Mortemart des Islets should be teaching a public colored school
for--it makes one blush to name it--seven dollars and a half a month.
For seven dollars and a half a month to teach a set of--well! He found
out where she lived, a little cabin--not so much worse than his own,
for that matter--in the corner of a field; no companion, no servant,
nothing but food and shelter. Her clothes have been described.