“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 difficulty—­”

“Do you love me?”

“How can I do otherwise than love you?—­But would you not have been wiser to remain at Sancerre?—­I am in the most abject poverty, and I fear to drag you into it—­”

“Your misery will be paradise to me.  I only ask to live here, never to go out—­”

“Good God! that is all very fine in words, but—­” Dinah sat down and melted into tears as she heard this speech, roughly spoken.

Lousteau could not resist this distress.  He clasped the Baroness in his arms and kissed her.

“Do not cry, Didine!” said he; and, as he uttered the words, he saw in the mirror the figure of Madame Cardot, looking at him from the further end of the rooms.  “Come, Didine, go with Pamela and get your trunks unloaded,” said he in her ear.  “Go; do not cry; we will be happy!”

He led her to the door, and then came back to divert the storm.

“Monsieur,” said Madame Cardot, “I congratulate myself on having resolved to see for myself the home of the man who was to have been my son-in-law.  If my daughter were to die of it, she should never be the wife of such a man as you.  You must devote yourself to making your Didine happy, monsieur.”

And the virtuous lady walked out, followed by Felicie, who was crying too, for she had become accustomed to Etienne.  The dreadful Madame Cardot got into her hackney-coach again, staring insolently at the hapless Dinah, in whose heart the sting still rankled of “that is all very fine in words”; but who, nevertheless, like every woman in love, believed in the murmured, “Do not cry, Didine!”

Lousteau, who was not lacking in the sort of decision which grows out of the vicissitudes of a storm-tossed life, reflected thus: