filling her life with a single passion, order--a fantastic, abnormal sort
of order, which consisted in brushing, wiping, dusting, and polishing the
mirrors, the gilding and the door-knobs, with her own hands, from morning
till night.

When she had nothing else to clean, the strange woman would attack her
rings, her watch-chain, her brooches, scrubbing the cameos and pearls,
and, by dint of polishing the combination of her own name and her
husband's, she had effaced all the letters of both. Her fixed idea
followed her to Savigny. She picked up dead branches in the paths,
scratched the moss from the benches with the end of her umbrella, and
would have liked to dust the leaves and sweep down the old trees; and
often, when in the train, she looked with envy at the little villas
standing in a line along the track, white and clean, with their gleaming
utensils, the pewter ball, and the little oblong gardens, which resemble
drawers in a bureau. Those were her ideal of a country-house.

M. Fromont, who came only occasionally and was always absorbed by his
business affairs, enjoyed Savigny little more than she. Claire alone
felt really at home in that lovely park. She was familiar with its
smallest shrub. Being obliged to provide her own amusements, like all
only children, she had become attached to certain walks, watched the
flowers bloom, had her favorite path, her favorite tree, her favorite
bench for reading. The dinner-bell always surprised her far away in the
park. She would come to the table, out of breath but happy, flushed with
the fresh air. The shadow of the hornbeams, stealing over that youthful
brow, had imprinted a sort of gentle melancholy there, and the deep, dark
green of the ponds, crossed by vague rays, was reflected in her eyes.

Those lovely surroundings had in very truth shielded her from the