"It is—well, it is Brother St. Ernest-Martyr, mother."
Dropping her embroidery, Bridget contemplated her daughter with extreme astonishment. Hena, however, proceeded with a candid smile:
"Does that astonish you, mother? I am, myself, a good deal more astonished."
Hena uttered these words with such ingenuousness, her handsome face, clear as her soul, turned to her mother with such trustfulness, that Bridget, at once uneasy and confident—uneasy, by reason of the revelation; confident, by reason of Hena's innocent assurance—said to her after a short pause:
"Indeed, dear daughter, I am astonished at what I learn from you. You saw, it seems to me, Brother St. Ernest-Martyr only two or three times at our friend Mary La Catelle's, before that unhappy affair of the other evening on the bridge."
"Yes, mother. And that is just the extraordinary thing about it. Since day before yesterday I constantly think of Brother St. Ernest-Martyr. And that is not all. Last night I dreamt of him!"
"Dreamt of him!" exclaimed Bridget.
So far from evading her mother's gaze, Hena's only answer was two affirmative nods of the head, which she gave, opening wide her beautiful blue eyes, in which the childlike and charming astonishment, that her own sentiments caused her, was depicted.
"Yes, mother; I dreamt of him. I saw him picking up at the door of a church a poor child that shook with cold. I saw him pick up the child, hold it in his arms, warm it with his breath, and contemplate it with so pitying and tender an air, that the tears forced themselves to my eyes. I was so moved that I woke up with a start—and I really wept!"
"That dream is singular, my daughter!"