It was on one of the first days of June.  Clotilde had left early in the morning, fresh and radiant as the dawn.  Two hours later, Lucan mounted his horse and started at a walk.  The roads are lovely in Normandy at this season.  The hawthorn hedges perfume the country, and sprinkle here and there the edges of the road with their rosy snow.  A profusion of fresh verdure, dotted with wild flowers, covers the face of the ditches.  All that, under the gay morning sun, is a feast for the eyes.  M. de Lucan, however, greatly contrary to his custom, bestowed but very slight attention upon the spectacle of that smiling nature.  He was preoccupied, to a degree that surprised himself, with his coming meeting with his step-daughter.  Julia had been such a besetting thought in his mind that he had retained of her an exaggerated impression.  He strove in vain to restore her to her natural proportions, which were, after all, only those of a child, formerly a naughty child, now a prodigal child.  He had become accustomed to invest her, in his imagination, with a mysterious importance and a sort of fatal power, of which he found it difficult to strip her.  He laughed and felt irritated at his own weakness; but he experienced an agitation mingled with curiosity and vague uneasiness, at the moment of beholding face to face that sphinx whose shadow had so long disturbed his life, and who now came in person to sit at his fireside.

An open barouche, decked with parasols, appeared at the summit of a hill; Lucan saw a head leaning and a handkerchief waving outside the carriage; he urged at once his horse to a gallop.  Almost at the same instant the carriage stopped, and a young woman jumped lightly upon the road; she turned around to address a few words to her traveling-companions, and advanced alone toward Lucan.  Not wishing to be outdone in politeness, he alighted also, handed his horse to the groom who followed him, and started with cheerful alacrity in the direction of the young woman, whom he did not recognize, but who was evidently Julia.  She was coming toward him without haste, with a sliding walk, rocking gently her flexible figure.  As she drew near, she threw off her vail with a rapid motion of her hand, and Lucan was enabled to find again upon that youthful face, in those large and slightly clouded eyes, and the pure and stretching arch of the eyebrows, some features of the child he had known.

When Julia’s glance met that of Lucan, her pale complexion became suffused with a purple blush.

He bowed very low to her, and with a smile full of affectionate grace: 

“Welcome!” he said.

“Thank you, sir,” said Julia, in a voice whose grave and melodious suavity struck Lucan; “friends, are we not?” And she held out both her hands to him with charming resolution.

He drew her gently to himself to kiss her; but thinking that he felt a slight resistance in the suddenly stiffening arms of his step-daughter, he contented himself with kissing her wrist just above her glove.  Then affecting to look at her with a polite admiration, which, however, was perfectly sincere: