"Ah! but it is good that he has at last a friend to whom he may speak as a Ladeau should speak. May the saints keep her! she has the good heart of one the Virgin loves," said Marie, and many a candle did she buy and keep burning on the convent's shrines for Hetty's protection and conversion.
One night Marie overheard Father Antoine say to Hetty, as he bade her good-night at the garden gate:
"My daughter, you look better and younger every day."
"Do I?" replied Hetty, cheerfully: "that's an odd thing for a woman so old as I am. My birthday is next month. I shall be forty-six."
"Youth is not a matter of years," replied Father Antoine. "I have known very young women much older than you."
Hetty smiled sadly, and walked on. Father Antoine's words had given her a pang. They were almost the same words which Dr. Eben had said to her again and again, when she had reasoned with him against his love for her, a woman so much older than himself. "That is all very well to say," thought Hetty in her matter-of-fact way, "and no doubt there are great differences in people: but old age is old age, soften it how you will; and youth is youth; and youth is beautiful, and old age is ugly. Father Antoine knows it just as well as any man. Don't I see, good as he is, every day of my life, with what a different look he blesses the fair young maidens from that with which he blesses the wrinkled old women. There is no use minding it. It can't be helped. But things might as well be called by their right names."
Marie sat down on a garden bench, and reflected. So the good Aunt Hibba's birthday was next month, and there would be nobody to keep it for her in this strange country. "How can we find out?" thought Marie, "and give her a pleasure."
In summer weather, Father Antoine took his simple dinners on the porch. It was cool there, and the vines and flowers gave to the little nook a certain air of elegance which Father Antoine enjoyed without recognizing why. On this evening Marie lingered after she had removed the table. She fidgeted about, picking up a leaf here and there, and looking at her master, till he perceived that she had something on her mind.
"Oh, M'sieur Antoine!" she replied, "it is about the good Aunt Hibba's birthday. Could you not ask her when is the day? and it should be a _fête_ day, if we only knew it; there is not one that would not be glad to help make it beautiful."