of money more than sufficient to buy
a little cottage, and fit it up with all needful comforts. She had no
sentimental dispositions towards deprivation and wretchedness. All her
plannings looked toward a useful, cheery, comfortable life. Among her
purchases were gardening utensils, which she could use herself, and
seeds and shrubs suited to the soil of St. Mary's. Strangely enough, the
only cottage which she could find at all adapted to her purpose was one
very near Father Antoine's, and almost precisely like it. It stood in
the edge of the forest, and had still left in its enclosure many of the
stumps of recently felled trees. All Hetty's farmer's instincts revived
in full force; and, only a few days after Father Antoine's conversation
with her, he found her one morning superintending the uprooting of these
stumps, and making preparations for grading the land. As he watched her
active movements, energetic tones, and fresh open face, he fell into a
maze of wondering thought. This was no morbid sentimentalist; no pining,
heart-broken woman. Except that truthfulness was stamped on every
lineament of Hetty's countenance, Father Antoine would have doubted her
story; and, except that her every act showed such vigorous common sense,
he would have doubted her sanity. As it was, his perplexity deepened;
so also did his interest in her. It was impossible not to admire this
brisk, kindly, outspoken woman, who already moved about in the village
with a certain air of motherly interest in every thing and everybody;
had already begun to "help" in her own sturdy fashion, and had already
won the goodwill of old and young.

"The good God will surely open her eyes in his own time," thought Father
Antoine, and in his heart he pondered much what a good thing it would
be, if, when that time came, Hetty could be persuaded to become the Lady
Superior of the Convent of the Bleeding Heart, only a few miles from St.
Mary's. "She is born for an abbess," he said to himself: "her will is
like the will of a man, but she is full of succor and tender offices.
She would be a second Angelique, in her fervor and zeal." And the good
old priest said rosaries full of prayers for Hetty, night and day.

There were two "Houses of Cure" in St. Mary's, both under the care of
skilful physicians, who made specialties of treatment with the waters of
the springs. One of these physicians was a Roman Catholic, and employed
no nurses except the Sisters from the Convent