--all the more readily because Madame
Cardot placed a gold piece in her hand.

It was by this time about noon, the hour at which the journalist would
return from breakfasting at the Cafe Anglais. As he crossed the open
space between the Church of Notre-Dame de Lorette and the Rue des
Martyrs, Lousteau happened to look at a hired coach that was toiling up
the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, and he fancied it was a dream when he
saw the face of Dinah! He stood frozen to the spot when, on reaching his
house, he beheld his Didine at the coach door.

"What has brought you here?" he inquired.--He adopted the familiar _tu_.
The formality of _vous_ was out of the question to a woman he must get
rid of.

"Why, my love," cried she, "have you not read my letters?"

"Certainly I have," said Lousteau.

"Well, then?"

"Well, then?"

"You are a father," replied the country lady.

"Faugh!" cried he, disregarding the barbarity of such an exclamation.
"Well," thought he to himself, "she must be prepared for the blow."

He signed to the coachman to wait, gave his hand to Madame de la
Baudraye, and left the man with the chaise full of trunks, vowing that
he would send away _illico_, as he said to himself, the woman and her
luggage, back to the place she had come from.

"Monsieur, monsieur," called out little Pamela.

The child had some sense, and felt that three women must not be allowed
to meet in a bachelor's rooms.

"Well, well!" said Lousteau, dragging Dinah along.

Pamela concluded that the lady must be some relation; however, she
added:

"The key is in the door; your mother-in-law is there."

In his agitation, while Madame de la Baudraye was pouring out a flood of
words, Etienne understood the child to say, "Mother is there," the only
circumstance that suggested itself as possible, and he went in.

Felicie and her mother, who were by this time in the bed-room, crept
into a corner on seeing Etienne enter with a woman.

"At last, Etienne, my dearest, I am yours for life!" cried Dinah,
throwing her arms round his neck, and clasping him closely, while he
took the key from the outside of the door. "Life is a perpetual anguish
to me in that house at Anzy. I could bear it no longer; and when
the time came for me to proclaim my happiness--well, I had not the
courage.--Here I am, your wife with your child! And you have not written
to me; you have left me two months without a line."

"But, Dinah, you place me in the greatest