envied him.

Yesterday, for the first time, at that same corner, he had encountered
this fair stranger and her urchin escort, abruptly, as they were making
the same turn they now repeated, and all in a flash had wondered who
might be this lovely apparition. Of such patrician beauty, such
elegance of form and bearing, such witchery of simple attire, and such
un-Italian yet Latin type, in this antique Creole, modernly Italianized
quarter--who and what, so early in the day, down here among the shops,
where so meagre a remnant of the old high life clung on in these
balconied upper stories--who, what, whence, whither, and wherefore?

In that flash of time she had passed, and the very liveliness of his
interest, combined with the urchin's consecrated awe--not to mention
his own mortifying remembrance of one or two other-day lapses from the
austerities of the old street--restrained him from a backward glance
until he could cross the way as if to enter the great, white, lately
completed court-house. Then both she and her satellite had vanished.

He turned again, but not to enter the building. His watch read but
half past eight, and his first errand of the day, unless seeing her had
been his first, was to go one square farther on, for a look at the
wreckers tearing down the old Hotel St. Louis. As he turned, a man
neat of dress and well beyond middle age made him a suave gesture.

"Sir, if you please. You are, I think, Mr. Chester, notary public and
attorney at law?"

"That is my name and trade, sir." Evidently Mr. Geoffry Chester was
also an American, a Southerner.