It would be the easiest way out of all their difficulties.

Since her heart, such as it was, fluttered, a mournful ghost, over the Place d'Armes, where her Gonzales was shot, it might better go to Jean Jacques than anyone else; for he was a man of parts, of money, and of looks, and she loved these all; and to her credit she loved his looks better than all the rest.

She had no real cupidity, and she was not greatly enamoured of brains.

She had some real philosophy of life learned in a hard school; and it was infinitely better founded than the smattering of conventional philosophy got by Jean Jacques from his compendium picked up on the quay at Quebec.
Yet Jean Jacques' cruiser of life was not wholly unarmed.

From his Norman forebears he had, beneath all, a shrewdness and an elementary alertness not submerged by his vain, kind nature.