"He complained bitterly of that condemned door," said Madame Thierry to herself, as she thought of her son. "A score of times he has had an idea of going and asking the countess to remove the prohibition for my benefit, promising on his honor that he himself would never cross the threshold of the pavilion. I have always dissuaded him from taking a step which might have subjected us to humiliation. How glad he will be to see me at liberty! But how shall I arrange matters to give him a little surprise? Suppose I should send him on an errand to-morrow morning, while the workmen are here?" She was arranging her plan in her head, when Julien came home to dinner. The straw chair was still in the garden near the window. Madame d'Estrelle had placed her white parasol on the ground against the chair, and had forgotten to take it. Madame Thierry had gone into the kitchen to tell her only servant, a strapping Norman wench, to bring in the chair. So Julien saw those two objects, without any previous warning. He divined without comprehending; his head swam, his heart beat fast, and his mother found him so confused, so excited, so strange, that she was frightened, thinking that something had happened to him. "What is it, in heaven's name?" she cried, running to him. "Nothing, mother," said Julien, after a slight struggle with himself to overcome his emotion. "I hurried home and I was very warm, so that the cool air of the studio gave me a chill. I am hungry, let's have dinner; you can explain to me at the table the meaning of this visit you have received." He took in the chair, unfolded and refolded the parasol, and kept it in his hands a long while, with an affectation of indifference; but his hands trembled, and he could not meet his mother's eyes. "_Mon Dieu!_" she said to herself, "can it be that this increase of melancholy during the past fortnight, this refusal to sing, these stifled sighs, this peculiar behavior, this sleeplessness and loss of appetite are due to--But he doesn't know her, he has hardly seen her in the distance. Oh! my poor child, can it be possible?" They took their places at the table. Julien questioned his mother calmly enough. She described the countess's visit with much discretion, restraining the impulse of her heart, which would have made her eloquent on the subject, had it not been for the discovery she had made, or the danger she began to foresee. Julien felt that his mother was watching him, and he kept a close watch upon himself. He had never before had any secrets from her; but, during the last few days he had had one, and the fear of alarming her made him cunning. "This step of Madame d'Estrelle," he said, "shows that she is a prudent and gracious woman. She has realized--a little tardily perhaps--that she owed you some consideration. Let us be grateful to her for her kindness of heart. You told her, I presume, that I had sufficient good sense not to consider myself included in the permission she has given you?"