I can only offer you a plate of soup, a chine of pork, and cheese made in the country; but you must be hungry, and when one has a good appetite, one is not hard to please." Every one had been seated at the table; the servants at the lower end, and Reine Vincart, near the fireplace, between M.de Buxieres and the driver.

La Guite helped the cabbage-soup all around; soon nothing was heard but the clinking of spoons and smacking of lips.

Julien, scarcely recovered from his bewilderment, watched furtively the pretty, robust young girl presiding at the supper, and keeping, at the same time, a watchful eye over all the details of service.

He thought her strange; she upset all his ideas.

His own imagination and his theories pictured a woman, and more especially a young girl, as a submissive, modest, shadowy creature, with downcast look, only raising her eyes to consult her husband or her mother as to what is allowable and what is forbidden.
Now, Reine did not fulfil any of the requirements of this ideal.
She seemed to be hardly twenty-two years old, and she acted with the initiative genius, the frankness and the decision of a man, retaining all the while the tenderness and easy grace of a woman.