The young girl feared to disturb them, and was about to retire without speaking, when Madame Claes caught sight of her, and said:-- "Come in, Marguerite; come here, dear child." She drew her down, kissed her tenderly on the forehead, and said, "Carry your book into your own room; but do not sit up too late." "Good-night, my darling daughter," said Balthazar.
Marguerite kissed her father and mother and went away.

Husband and wife remained alone for some minutes without speaking, watching the last glimmer of the twilight as it faded from the trees in the garden, whose outlines were scarcely discernible through the gathering darkness.
When night had almost fallen, Balthazar said to his wife in a voice of emotion,-- "Let us go upstairs." Long before English manners and customs had consecrated the wife's chamber as a sacred spot, that of a Flemish woman was impenetrable.

The good housewives of the Low Countries did not make it a symbol of virtue.

It was to them a habit contracted from childhood, a domestic superstition, rendering the bedroom a delightful sanctuary of tender feelings, where simplicity blended with all that was most sweet and sacred in social life.

Any woman in Madame Claes's position would have wished to gather about her the elegances of life, but Josephine had done so with exquisite taste, knowing well how great an influence the aspect of our surroundings exerts upon the feelings of others.