She was firm enough to conceal her agitation, and begged her mother to see the children put to bed. She then sent for Lousteau, and received him in a boudoir, next to the great drawing-room, with open doors. She was going to a ball after the Opera, and was wearing a beautiful dress of brocade in stripes alternately plain and flowered with pale blue. Her gloves, trimmed with tassels, showed off her beautiful white arms. She was shimmering with lace and all the dainty trifles required by fashion. Her hair, dressed a la Sevigne, gave her a look of elegance; a necklace of pearls lay on her bosom like bubbles on snow.
“What is the matter, monsieur?” said the Countess, putting out her foot from below her skirt to rest it on a velvet cushion. “I thought, I hoped, I was quite forgotten.”
“If I should reply Never, you would refuse to believe me,” said Lousteau, who remained standing, or walked about the room, chewing the flowers he plucked from the flower-stands full of plants that scented the room.
For a moment silence reigned. Madame de la Baudraye, studying Lousteau, saw that he was dressed as the most fastidious dandy might have been.
“You are the only person in the world who can help me, or hold out a plank to me—for I am drowning, and have already swallowed more than one mouthful——” said he, standing still in front of Dinah, and seeming to yield to an overpowering impulse. “Since you see me here, it is because my affairs are going to the devil.”
“That is enough,” said she; “I understand.”
There was another pause, during which Lousteau turned away, took out his handkerchief, and seemed to wipe away a tear.
“How much do you want, Etienne,” she went on in motherly tones. “We are at this moment old comrades; speak to me as you would to—to Bixiou.”
“To save my furniture from vanishing into thin air to-morrow morning at the auction mart, eighteen hundred francs! To repay my friends, as much again! Three quarters’ rent to the landlord—whom you know.—My ‘uncle’ wants five hundred francs—”
“And you!—to live on?”