Justine also had rigid features, and a blunt way of speaking. She was a strong generous character. An earnest Roman Catholic, she respected the silence of her husband who was of Protestant descent, nominally converted indeed, but a free-thinker if there ever was one. Caroline knew these circumstances and was touched to see the delicate respect which this superior woman knew how to weave into her love for her husband. It must be remembered that Mlle de Saint-Geneix, the daughter of a very weak man, and the sister of an inefficient woman, owed the great courage she possessed first to her mother, who was of Cévenol parentage, and afterward to the ideas Justine had given her in early life. She perceived this very clearly when she found herself seated between this old couple whose precise language and notions caused her neither fear nor surprise. It seemed as if the milk of her mountain nurse had passed into her whole being, and as if she were there in the presence of types with which she had already been made familiar in some previous existence. "My friends," said she, when Justine had brought her the cream of the dessert, while Peyraque washed down his soup with a draught of hot wine, followed up before long with a draught of black coffee, "I promised to tell you my story and here it is in few words. One of the sons of my old lady had some idea of marrying me." "Ah, indeed! that might well be," said Justine. "You are right, because our characters and ideas are alike. Any one ought to have foreseen that, and I myself first of all." "And the mother, too!" said Peyraque. "Well, no one seems to have thought of it; and the son surprised and even angered the mother when he told her he loved me." "And you?" asked Justine. "I--I--why he never told me of it at all; and, as I knew I was not noble enough or wealthy enough for him, I should never have allowed him to think of it." "Yes, that's right!" returned Peyraque. "And it's true!" added Justine. "Then I saw I could not stay a day longer, and at the first angry word from the mother I went away without seeing the son again; but the son would have hurried after me if I had remained with my sister. The Marchioness wanted me to stay a little to have an explanation with him, to tell him I did not love him--" "That is what ought to have been done, perhaps," said Peyraque. Caroline was forcibly impressed by the austere logic of the peasant. "Yes, unquestionably," thought she, "my courage ought to have been pushed thus far." And, as she still kept silence, the nurse, enlightened by the penetration of a loving heart, said to her husband, sharply, "Stop talking there, you! How you run on! How do you know she did n't love him, this poor child?" "Ah! that, that is another thing," replied Peyraque, bowing his serious, thoughtful head, which now looked nobler for the sense of delicate pity expressed upon his face.