noon
The lady took two or three turns along the gently winding garden walk , careful never to lose sight of a certain row of windows , to which she seemed to give her whole attention ; then she sat down on a bench , a piece of elegant semi-rusticity made of branches with the bark left on the wood . From the place where she sat she could look through the garden railings along the inner boulevards to the wonderful dome of the Invalides rising above the crests of a forest of elm-trees , and see the less striking view of her own grounds terminating in the gray stone front of one of the finest hotels in the Faubourg Saint-Germain . Silence lay over the neighboring gardens , and the boulevards stretching away to the Invalides . Day scarcely begins at noon in that aristocratic quarter , and masters and servants are all alike asleep , or just awakening , unless some young lady takes it into her head to go for an early ride , or a gray-headed diplomatist rises betimes to redraft a protocol . The elderly lady stirring abroad at that hour was the Marquise d'Aiglemont , the mother of Mme. de Saint-Hereen , to whom the great house belonged . The Marquise had made over the mansion and almost her whole fortune to her daughter , reserving only an annuity for herself . The Comtesse Moina de Saint-Hereen was Mme. d'Aiglemont 's youngest child .