Joanna talked precisely as Batavius talked. All of his enunciations met with her "Amen." There are women who are incapable of but one affection,--that one which affects them in especial,--and Joanna was of this order. "My husband" was perpetually on her tongue. She looked upon her position as a wife and housekeeper as unique. Other woman might have, during the past six thousand years, held these positions in an indifferent kind of way; but only she had ever comprehended and properly fulfilled the duties they involved. Madam Van Heemskirk smiled a little when Joanna gave her advices about her house and her duties, when she disapproved of her father's political attitude, when she looked injured by Bram's imprudence.
"Not only is wisdom born with Joanna and Batavius, it will also die with them; so they think," said Katharine indignantly, after one of Joanna's periodical visitations.
A tear twinkled in madam's eyes; but she answered, "I shall not distress myself overmuch. Always I have said, 'Joanna has a little soul. Only what is for her own good can she love.'"
"It is Batavius; and a woman must love her husband, mother."
"That is the truth: first and best of all, she must love him, Katherine; but not as the dog loves and fawns on his master, or the squaw bends down to her brave. A good woman gives not up her own principles and thoughts and ways. A good woman will remember the love of her father and mother and brother and sister, her old home, her old friends; and contempt she will not feel and show for the things of the past, which often, for her, were far better than she was worthy of."
"There is one I love, mother, love with all my soul. For him I would die. But for thee also I would die. Love thee, mother? I love thee and my father better because I love him. My mother, fret thee not, nor think that ever Joanna can really forget thee. If a daughter could forget her good father and her good mother, then with the women who sit weeping in the outer darkness, God would justly give her her portion. Such a daughter could not be."
Lysbet sadly shook her head. "When I was a little girl, Katherine, I read in a book about the old Romans, how a wicked daughter over the bleeding corpse of her father drove her chariot. She wanted his crown for her own husband; and over the warm, quivering body of her father she drove. When I read that story, Katherine, my eyes I covered with my hands. I thought such a wicked woman in the world could not be. Alas, _mijn kind!_ often since then I have seen daughters over the bleeding hearts of their mothers and fathers drive; and frown and scold and be much injured and offended if once, in their pain and sorrow, they cry out."