Before long, her jealousy put weapons into Lousteau’s hands.  During the carnival of 1840, she disguised herself to go to the balls at the Opera-house, and to suppers where she met courtesans, in order to keep an eye on all Etienne’s amusements.

On the day of Mid-Lent—­or rather, at eight on the morning after —­Dinah came home 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 save them from seeing their mother disguised like a—­”