V
If Julien had been a libertine, he could have adopted no better plan to arouse Madame d'Estrelle's passion. The days succeeded one another, and no chance brought them face to face for an instant. And yet Julie, whether from excess of confidence or from heedlessness, lived much more in her garden than in her salon, and preferred a solitary stroll among the shrubbery to the conversation of her intimate friends. There were evenings when she denied herself to callers on the pretext of indisposition or weariness, but on those evenings she dressed none the less carefully, as if she expected some unusual visit; then she would go to the further end of the garden, hurry back in alarm at the faintest sound, then return to see what had frightened her, and fall into a sort of panic-stricken revery
