Sophie had gone to school at the convent in the city, but she had no ambition.

She had inherited the stolid simplicity of her English grandfather.

When her schooling was finished she let her school friends drop, and came back to Bonaventure, rather stately, given to reading, and little inclined to bother her head about anybody.
Christine, the younger sister, had gone to Quebec also, but after a week of rebellion, bad temper and sharp speaking, had come home again without ceremony, and refused to return.

Despite certain likenesses to her mother, she had a deep, if unintelligible, admiration for her father, and she never tired looking at the picture of her great-grandfather in the dress of a chevalier of St.Louis--almost the only thing that had been saved from the old Manor House, destroyed so long before her time.
Perhaps it was the importance she attached to her ancestry which made her impatient with their present position, and with people in the parish who would not altogether recognise their claims.

It was that which made her give a little jerky bow to the miller and the postmaster when she passed the mill.
"Come, dusty-belly," said Baby, "what's all this pom-pom of the Lavilettes ?" The miller pursed out his lips, contracted his brows, and arranged his loose waistcoat carefully on his fat stomach.
"Money," said he, oracularly, as though he had solved the great question of the universe.
"La! la! But other folks have money; and they step about Bonaventure no more louder than a cat." "Blood," added Gatineau, corrugating his brows still more.
"Bosh!" "Both together--money and blood," rejoined the miller.