She went through the house, examined everything with a keen, unerring eye, made her comments and her deductions on account of the slightest crumbling of the walls, cried down the furniture and the fixtures as much as she possibly could, and talked and acted with a cynicism born of avarice and aversion, which fairly sickened Marcel and made the notary blush more than once. When she came to the boudoir where Julie had taken refuge, she demanded that the door be opened. It was opened instantly. Julie had heard her approaching, and being unwilling to undergo the supreme affront of receiving a hateful visitor against her will, she had gone out through the garden, bidding Camille open the door as soon as the demand was made. Camille was proud, she could point to sheriffs among her ancestors! She could not resist the temptation to give the dowager a lesson: she walked to a chest of drawers in which she had hastily and designedly placed a few trifles, and said in a tone of sarcastic resignation:
"Perhaps madame desires to count the linen? There are some of my mistress's ribbons and neckerchiefs here."
The dowager cared little for the chatter of a lady's maid; but her hatred of Julie was lashed into fury. She cast a rapid glance through the window and saw Madame d'Estrelle crossing the garden toward the pavilion.
Doubtless that was a great mistake on Julie's part; but she too was exasperated. She felt as if she were driven from her house, from her bedroom, from her most sacred retreat, by the shamelessness of persecution. She longed for a refuge, her brain was in a whirl, and she bent her steps, without reflection, as if by instinct, toward Madame Thierry and Julien.
"She will not come to their house to rout me out," she thought; "she will not dare. I am still the owner of the place, and I alone have the right to enter the premises of my lessees. Moreover, it is time for me to acknowledge my friendly relations with Madame Thierry, and after to-day I propose to go to her house as I go to the houses of other women who have sons or brothers."
As she resolutely entered the pavilion, the marchioness, impelled by a no less sudden resolution, rushed from the boudoir into the garden.
"Where are you going, madame?" asked Marcel, who had not seen Julie fleeing, but who distrusted the gleaming eyes and the jerky gait of the vigorous and active old woman.
The marchioness did not deign to answer, but hopped on like a plucked magpie. Marcel and the notary followed her, being unable to stop her.
She knew the place very well, although she had not shown herself there for a long while, having had a falling-out with her step-son the count at the time of her second marriage. She arrived at the pavilion a few minutes after Julie, and entered the studio like a bombshell.
Julien was alone; he was not even aware that Madame d'Estrelle had come in and gone up to his mother's room. Since he had been seeing Julie in secret, he had ceased to be on the lookout for her. They were so entirely agreed that they would not meet by chance! He was working and singing over his work. Julie, as she passed through the little porch, had had an indefinable sudden presentiment of the danger of being followed; so she had gone upstairs, convinced that the widow's bedroom was an inviolable refuge.