“You don’t believe in dreams, do you mother?” she asked.
Upon this subject, as well as upon many others, Mme. Favoral had no particular opinion.
“Why do you ask the question?” said she.
“Because I have had such a strange one.”
“Oh!”
“It seemed to me that suddenly a young man, whom I did not know, stood before me. He would have been most happy, said he to me, to ask my hand, but he dared not, being very poor. And he begged me to wait three years, during which he would make his fortune.”
Mme. Favoral smiled.
“Why it’s quite a romance,” said she.
“But it wasn’t a romance in my dream,” interrupted Mlle. Gilberte. “This young man spoke in a tone of such profound conviction, that it was impossible for me, as it were, to doubt him. I thought to myself that he would be incapable of such an odious villainy as to abuse the confiding credulity of a poor girl.”
“And what did you answer him?”