ome from the ball in her fancy dress to go to bed. She had gone to
spy on Lousteau, who, believing her to be ill, had engaged himself for
that evening to Fanny Beaupre. The journalist, warned by a friend, had
behaved so as to deceive the poor woman, only too ready to be deceived.

As she stepped out of the hired cab, Dinah met Monsieur de la Baudraye,
to whom the porter pointed her out. The little old man took his wife by
the arm, saying, in an icy tone:

"So this is you, madame!"

This sudden advent of conjugal authority, before which she felt herself
so small, and, above all, these words, almost froze the heart of
the unhappy woman caught in the costume of a _debardeur_. To escape
Etienne's eye the more effectually, she had chosen a dress he was not
likely to detect her in. She took advantage of the mask she still had
on to escape without replying, changed her dress, and went up to her
mother's rooms, where she found her husband waiting for her. In spite of
her assumed dignity, she blushed in the old man's presence.

"What do you want of me, monsieur?" she asked. "Are we not separated
forever?"

"Actually, yes," said Monsieur de la Baudraye. "Legally, no."

Madame Piedefer was telegraphing signals to her daughter, which Dinah
presently observed and understood.

"Nothing could have brought you here but your own interests," she said,
in a bitter tone.

"_Our_ interests," said the little man coldly, "for we have two
children.--Your Uncle Silas Piedefer is dead, at New York, where, after
having made and lost several fortunes in various parts of the world, he
has finally left some seven or eight hundred thousand francs--they say
twelve--but there is stock-in-trade to be sold. I am the chief in our
common interests, and act for you."

"Oh!" cried Dinah, "in everything that relates to business, I trust no
one but Monsieur de Clagny. He knows the law, come to terms with him;
what he does, will be done right."

"I have no occasion for Monsieur de Clagny," answered Monsieur de la
Baudraye, "to take my children from you--"

"Your children!" exclaimed Dinah. "Your children, to whom you have not
sent a sou! _Your_ children!" She burst into a loud shout of laughter;
but Monsieur de la Baudraye's unmoved coolness threw ice on the
explosion.

"Your mother has just brought them to show me," he went on. "They are
charming boys. I do not intend to part from them. I shall take them to
our house at Anzy, if it were only to