And whatever she might know, she had retained such child-like purity that in spite of her six-and-twenty summers all the blood in her veins would occasionally rush to her cheeks in fiery blushes, which drove her to despair.
"My dear Marie," Guillaume now exclaimed, "you know very well that the youngsters were simply joking.

You are in the right, of course....

And your boiled eggs cannot be matched in the whole world." He said this in so soft and affectionate a tone that the young woman flushed purple.

Then, becoming conscious of it, she coloured yet more deeply, and as the three young men glanced at her maliciously she grew angry with herself.

"Isn't it ridiculous, Monsieur l'Abbe," she said, turning towards Pierre, "for an old maid like myself to blush in that fashion?
People might think that I had committed a crime.