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--” “Silence!” said Madame de la Baudraye imperatively. “What do you want of me that brought you here?” “A power of attorney to receive our Uncle Silas’ property.” Dinah took a pen, wrote two lines to Monsieur de Clagny, and desired her husband to call again in the afternoon.