"I will tell you."
She examined the couple with curiosity. The gentleman was an old man with a long, venerable beard, a broad, bald, yellowish head, marked in the centre by a deep depression, a sort of enormous and deformed navel, like the imprint which would be caused by a large finger pressed into a soft substance. The lady, wrapped in a Persian shawl, showed, under a bonnet fashioned like a lamp-shade, an emaciated and meditative face; and in her dress as in her physiognomy could be found something of the English caricatures of the blue-stocking. The watery eyes of the elderly man had, however, a singular vivacity; they seemed illumined by an internal fire, like those of an ecstatic. He had acknowledged George's bow by a very amiable smile.
Hippolyte racked her memory. Where could she have met these two persons? She could not succeed in refreshing her memory, but she had a confused feeling that these strange old people had been involved in one of her love-dreams.
"Who is it? Tell me," she repeated in a whisper.
"The Martlets—Mr. Martlet and his wife. They will bring us good luck. Do you know where we first met them?"
"No; but I am sure that I have seen them somewhere."
"It was in the chapel in the Via Belsiana, on April the 2d, when I first knew you."
"Ah! yes. I remember!"
Her eyes lighted up; the coincidence seemed marvellous to her. She examined anew the two old people, and felt a kind of emotion.
"What a good augury!"