omed again in that throbbing heart; she tried to look
once into the eyes of the man she had loved so well, but the seething
blood rushed through her veins and mounted to her brain. Their eyes met
with the same fiery glow as had encouraged Lousteau on the Quay by the
Loire to crumple Dinah's muslin gown. The Bohemian put his arm round her
waist, she yielded, and their cheeks were touching.

"Here comes my mother, hide!" cried Dinah in alarm. And she hurried
forward to intercept Madame Piedefer.

"Mamma," said she--this word was to the stern old lady a coaxing
expression which never failed of its effect--"will you do me a great
favor? Take the carriage and go yourself to my banker, Monsieur
Mongenod, with a note I will give you, and bring back six thousand
francs. Come, come--it is an act of charity; come into my room."

And she dragged away her mother, who seemed very anxious to see who it
was that her daughter had been talking with in the boudoir.

Two days afterwards, Madame Piedefer held a conference with the cure of
the parish. After listening to the lamentations of the old mother, who
was in despair, the priest said very gravely:

"Any moral regeneration which is not based on a strong religious
sentiment, and carried out in the bosom of the Church, is built on
sand.--The many means of grace enjoined by the Catholic religion, small
as they are, and not understood, are so many dams necessary to restrain
the violence of evil promptings. Persuade your daughter to perform all
her religious duties, and we shall save her yet."

Within ten days of this meeting the Hotel de la Baudraye was shut
up. The Countess, the children, and her mother, in short, the whole
household, including a tutor, had gone away to Sancerre, where Dinah
intended to spend the summer. She was everything that was nice to the
Count, people said.

And so the Muse of Sancerre had simply come back to family and married
life; but certain evil tongues declared that she had been compelled
to come back, for that the little peer's wishes would no doubt be
fulfilled--he hoped for a little girl.

Gatien and Monsieur Gravier lavished every care, every servile attention
on the handsome Countess. Gatien, who during Madame de la Baudraye's
long absence had been to Paris to learn the art of _lionnerie_ or
dandyism, was supposed to have a good chance of finding favor in the
eyes of the disenchanted "Superior Woman." Others bet on the tutor;
Madame Piedefer urg