“You won’t understand me,” cried Lousteau, in a voice of exasperation. “Go away—she is there——”
“I beg your pardon; why did you not tell me sooner?—You are of age, and so is she,” he added in a lower voice, but loud enough to be heard by Dinah. “She will make you repent bitterly of your happiness!——”
“If it is a folly, I intend to commit it.—Good-bye.”
“A man gone overboard!” cried Bixiou.
“Devil take those friends who think they have a right to preach to you,” said Lousteau, opening the door of the bedroom, where he found Madame de la Baudraye sunk in an armchair and dabbing her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief.
“Oh, why did I come here?” sobbed she. “Good Heavens, why indeed?—Etienne, I am not so provincial as you think me.—You are making a fool of me.”
“Darling angel,” replied Lousteau, taking Dinah in his arms, lifting her from her chair, and dragging her half dead into the drawing-room, “we have both pledged our future, it is sacrifice for sacrifice. While I was loving you at Sancerre, they were engaging me to be married here, but I refused.—Oh! I was extremely distressed——”
“I am going,” cried Dinah, starting wildly to her feet and turning to the door.
“You will stay here, my Didine. All is at an end. And is this fortune so lightly earned after all? Must I not marry a gawky, tow-haired creature, with a red nose, the daughter of a notary, and saddle myself with a stepmother who could give Madame de Piedefer points on the score of bigotry—”
Pamela flew in, and whispered in Lousteau’s ear: