A small room, flooded with sunshine and filled with flowers, laughed at her like a garden from paradise. Azaleas, as tall as a man, spread their coronets of pink blossoms over a lounge piled with cushions; a sweet little escritoire stood near it, inlaid with tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl, and above waved the fronds of a feathery palm. But that was not the most beautiful thing; the most beautiful and surprising thing of all was the toilette-table. Veiled in white lace, it greeted her modestly from a corner. The top was a sheet of thick crystal glass polished at the edges, and on it stood a tall three-sided swing-mirror, in which you could see every part of yourself at once--your back hair, profile, dress fastening and all. Long had she wished for a mirror like this, but would never have dared to ask for it. This enchanting little room was, of course, the boudoir. Lilly Czepanek with a boudoir! Was such a miracle to be believed? An array of articles was laid out on the glass top of the dressing-table. You could not take them all in at a first glance, however wide you opened your eyes: ivory-backed hairbrushes, a set of four, hard and soft, a hand-glass with a daintily carved handle, a powder-puff in a round ivory box, a glove-buttoner and shoe-horn--all silver and ivory. And more, still more! Whoever saw such things? Only by degrees could you learn for what mysteries of the toilette they were designed, and on every single one flaunted in glistening gold the monogram "L. M." under the coronet with seven points. It was enough to drive you crazy with delight! Having gloried in everything to her heart's content, she proceeded on her triumphal march through her new territory. The room she was in had only one window, or rather a glass door. This opened on to a balcony, where a rocking-chair was placed, and where over a high iron trellis-work young creepers rambled. Later in the year, when the leaves were fully out, you would be quite shut in by high green walls; but now, in early spring, you could easily be seen through the spaces in the leaves from below. She slipped cautiously out through the glass door into the open air. The stables and barns were seen on her left above the kitchen-garden wall, forming a quadrangle round the yard; to the right were gigantic trees, their trunks green with moss, their tangle of boughs only thinly covered as yet with tender young leaves and buds. In them the birds were making a vociferous riot, almost deafening to hear. Straight opposite, at a few yards' distance, a gabled roof rose among the trees, belonging to an ancient one-storeyed shooting lodge that abutted on the park, and apparently had its entrance in the yard. Here at last some human creatures were visible. Two gentlemen, one with a short grey beard, the other middle-aged, stout, and as brown as a berry, walked up and down together smoking, and deep in conversation. And a third----