It seemed to her that to be the
owner of such a coach as that, to live in a fine house, and have a fine
gentleman for one's husband must be the very climax of bliss. She
wondered much at her aunt's contentment in her present estate.
"How canst thou bear it, Aunt Jeanne?" she said sometimes. "How canst
thou bear to live as we live here,--to be in the bar-room with the men,
and to sit always in the smoke, after the fine rooms and the company
thou hadst for so long?"
"Bah!" Jeanne would reply. "It's little thou knowest of that fine
company. I had like to die of weariness more often than I was gay in it;
and as for fine rooms, I care nothing for them."
"But thy husband, Aunt Jeanne," Victorine once ventured to say,--"surely
thou wert not weary when he was with thee?"
Jeanne's face darkened. "Keep a civiller tongue in thy head," she
replied, "than to be talking to widows of the husbands they have buried.
He was a good man, Willan Blaycke,--a good man; but I liked him not
overmuch, though we lived not in quarrelling. He went his ways, as men
go, and I let him be."
Victorine's curiosity was by no means satisfied.
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