The Gold Slippers

Lavinia Villac, who will be remembered as the lovely unfortunate heroine of Blue Camellia, is concerned in The Gold Slippers, with her children, Prosper and Anne-Marie.

Anne-Marie, the spoiled darling, had only to make up her mind to say “Yes” to one of half a dozen eligible young men, but at twenty-four she hadn’t yet been able to say it. As for Prosper, Lavinia’s only son and the mainstay of their rice mill, she knew that he had been going with increasing frequency to the dance hall over August Schultz’s grocery store, where most of the young men of Crowley used to go and exchange badinage with Titine, the girl who played the accordion and sang Cajun songs. Titine, and the gold slippers he bought her, took a place much further back in Prosper’s mind when he met and fell in love with Victorine La Branche, Lavinia was very happy about this, for not only was Victorine beautiful, spirited and wealthy, but Lavinia could also recognise in her that same indomitable constancy which she had herself, a constancy which would stand by the man she loved whatever people said about him.

Then a tragedy breaks. Titine is found dead in one of the bins of the Villac rice mill, and the last person to leave the mill before it closed that night was Prosper Villac.