As time went on, Lisbeth had contracted some rather strange
old-maidish habits. For instance, instead of following the fashions,
she expected the fashion to accept her ways and yield to her always
out-of-date notions. When the Baroness gave her a pretty new bonnet, or
a gown in the fashion of the day, Betty remade it completely at home,
and spoilt it by producing a dress of the style of the Empire or of
her old Lorraine costume. A thirty-franc bonnet came out a rag, and
the gown a disgrace. On this point, Lisbeth was as obstinate as a
mule; she would please no one but herself and believed herself
charming; whereas this assimilative process--harmonious, no doubt, in
so far as that it stamped her for an old maid from head to foot--made
her so ridiculous, that, with the best will in the world, no one could
admit her on any smart occasion.

This refractory, capricious, and independent spirit, and the
inexplicable wild shyness of the woman for whom the Baron had four
times found a match--an employe in his office, a retired major, an
army contractor, and a half-pay captain--while she had refused an army
lacemaker, who had since made his fortune, had won her the name of the
Nanny Goat, which the Baron gave her in jest. But this nickname only
met the peculiarities that lay on the surface, the eccentricities
which each of us displays to his neighbors in social life. This woman,
who, if closely studied, would have shown the most savage traits of
the peasant class, was still the girl who had clawed her cousin's
nose, and who, if she had not been trained to reason, would perhaps
have killed her in a fit of jealousy.

It was only her knowledge of the laws and of the world that enabled
her to control the swift instinct with which country folk, like wild