"That's no matter," said the old woman, very naturally.
She returned to the driver, bade him put her trunk under the porch, and paid him, at once replacing her purse in her pocket with a gesture that said much for provincial distrust.
Since Jansoulet had been Deputy for Corsica, his servants had seen so many strange, foreign-looking creatures alight at his door that they were not greatly surprised at sight of that sun-burned woman, with eyes like glowing coals, bearing much resemblance in her simple head-dress to a genuine Corsican, some old psalm-singer straight from the underbrush, but distinguished from newly-arrived islanders by the ease and tranquillity of her manners.
"What do you say, the master isn't in?" she said with an intonation which is much more frequently heard by the hands on a farm, on a mas in her province, than by the impertinent lackeys of a great Parisian household.
"No, the master isn't in."
"And the children?"
"They're taking their lesson. You can't see them."
"And Madame?"
"She's asleep. No one enters her room before three o'clock."
That seemed to surprise the good woman a little, that any one could stay in bed so late; but the sure instinct which, in default of education, acts as a guide to intelligent natures, prevented her from saying so to the servants, and she at once asked to speak to Paul de Géry.