1 Edna heard her father's voice and her sister Margaret's.
2 She and her younger sister, Janet, had quarreled a good deal through force of unfortunate habit.
3 She read a letter from her sister, who was away in the East, and who had engaged herself to be married.
4 Edna and her father had a warm, and almost violent dispute upon the subject of her refusal to attend her sister's wedding.
5 The Colonel reproached his daughter for her lack of filial kindness and respect, her want of sisterly affection and womanly consideration.
6 Later a young brother and sister gave recitations, which every one present had heard many times at winter evening entertainments in the city.
7 Robert was interested, and wanted to know what manner of girls the sisters were, what the father was like, and how long the mother had been dead.
8 Add to this the violent opposition of her father and her sister Margaret to her marriage with a Catholic, and we need seek no further for the motives which led her to accept Monsieur Pontellier for her husband.
9 Madame Ratignolle's sister, who had always been with her at such trying times, had not been able to come up from the plantation, and Adele had been inconsolable until Mrs. Pontellier so kindly promised to come to her.
10 Her older sister, Margaret, was matronly and dignified, probably from having assumed matronly and housewifely responsibilities too early in life, their mother having died when they were quite young, Margaret was not effusive; she was practical.