She took her parasol, one of those flat white parasols which produced a prettier effect among the shrubbery than our modern mushrooms, and placing the heels of her little slippers softly on the turf, her skirt turned gracefully back over the straight petticoat, she strolled pensively along under the lilac bushes in her garden, inhaling the air of spring in silent misery, starting at the voice of the nightingale, thinking of nobody, yet carried outside of herself by a boundless aspiration. She went from lilac to lilac until she drew near the pavilion, where, an hour earlier, Julien Thierry, the painter's son, the rich man's nephew, the solicitor's cousin, was at work. The garden was large for a garden in Paris, and was beautiful, both as to its arrangement and its contents. Every day Madame d'Estrelle walked around it two or three times, casting a melancholy or loving glance at each of the flower-beds with which the turf was studded. When she came in sight of the windows of the Louis XIII. pavilion, she did not turn away nor worry about being seen, for the pavilion had been long unoccupied. Julien and his mother had been settled there only a month; Madame d'Estrelle had complained to Marcel Thierry because the marquis, her father-in-law, being unwilling to sacrifice the trifling revenue from so worthless a piece of property, had let it to strange tenants. Marcel had reassured her by informing her that the new tenant was the venerable and most respectable widow of his uncle the artist. He had not mentioned Julien. It may be that the countess did not know that the painter had left a son. At all events it had not occurred to her to make inquiries about him. She had never seen him at the windows, in the first place because she was very near-sighted and the young women in those days did not wear glasses; and secondly, because Julien, being informed of the proximity of a person of rigid morals, had taken great pains not to show himself. Sometimes Madame d'Estrelle had seen at the first floor window a pale, refined face surmounted by a white cap, which saluted her with deferential reserve. She had returned the sweet-faced widow's salutation pleasantly, even with respect; but they had not as yet exchanged a word.