ent several times to
the Chateau d'Anzy to acquire the right to contradict the rumors current
as to the woman he still faithfully adored, even in her fall; and he
maintained that she and Lousteau were engaged together on some great
work. But the lawyer was laughed to scorn.

The month of October was lovely; autumn is the finest season in the
valley of the Loire; but in 1836 it was unusually glorious. Nature
seemed to aid and abet Dinah, who, as Bianchon had predicted, gradually
developed a heart-felt passion. In one month she was an altered
woman. She was surprised to find in herself so many inert and dormant
qualities, hitherto in abeyance. To her Lousteau seemed an angel; for
heart-love, the crowning need of a great nature, had made a new woman
of her. Dinah was alive! She had found an outlet for her powers, she
saw undreamed-of vistas in the future--in short, she was happy, happy
without alarms or hindrances. The vast castle, the gardens, the park,
the forest, favored love.

Lousteau found in Madame de la Baudraye an artlessness, nay, if you
will, an innocence of mind which made her very original; there was much
more of the unexpected and winning in her than in a girl. Lousteau was
quite alive to a form of flattery which in most women is assumed, but
which in Dinah was genuine; she really learned from him the ways of
love; he really was the first to reign in her heart. And, indeed, he
took the trouble to be exceedingly amiable.

Men, like women, have a stock in hand of recitatives, of _cantabile_,
of _nocturnes_, airs and refrains--shall we say of recipes, although we
speak of love--which each one believes to be exclusively his own. Men
who have reached Lousteau's age try to distribute the "movements"
of this repertoire through the whole opera of a passion. Lousteau,
regarding this adventure with Dinah as a mere temporary connection, was
eager to stamp himself on her memory in indelible lines; and during that
beautiful October he was prodigal of his most entrancing melodies and
most elaborate _barcarolles_. In fact, he exhausted every resource of
the stage management of love, to use an expression borrowed from the
theatrical dictionary, and admirably descriptive of his manoeuvres.

"If that woman ever forgets me!" he would sometimes say to himself as
they returned together from a long walk in the woods, "I will owe her no
grudge--she will have found something better."

When two beings have sung together all the