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:

"Didine is high-minded; when once she knows of my proposed marriage,
she will sacrifice herself for my future prospects, and I know how I can
manage to let her know." Delighted at having hit on a trick of which the
success seemed certain, he danced round to a familiar tune:

"_Larifla, fla, fla!_--And Didine once out of the way," he went
on, talking to himself, "I will treat Maman Cardot to a call and a
novelette: I have seduced her Felicie at Saint-Eustache--Felicie, guilty
through passion, bears in her bosom the pledge of our affection--and
_larifla, fla, fla!_ the father _Ergo_, the notary, his wife, and his
daughter are caught, nabbed----"

And, to her great amazement, Dinah discovered Etienne performing a
prohibited dance.

"Your arrival and our happiness