She felt a void in this fashionable life; she had no one for whom to dress, or whom to tell of her successes and triumphs. Sometimes the memory of her wretchedness came to her, mingled with memories of consuming joys. She would hate Lousteau for not taking any pains to follow her; she would have liked to get tender or furious letters from him. Dinah made no reply, so Monsieur de Clagny repeated the question, taking the Countess’ hand and pressing it between his own with devout respect. “Will you have the right hand or the left?” said she, smiling. “The left,” said he, “for I suppose you mean the truth or a fib.” “Well, then, I saw him,” she said, speaking into the lawyer’s ear. “And as I saw him looking so sad, so out of heart, I said to myself, Has he a cigar? Has he any money?” “If you wish for the truth, I can tell it you,” said the lawyer. “He is living as a husband with Fanny Beaupre. You have forced me to tell you this secret; I should never have told you, for you might have suspected me perhaps of an ungenerous motive.” Madame de la Baudraye grasped his hand. “Your husband,” said she to her chaperon, “is one of the rarest souls!--Ah! Why----” She shrank into her corner, looking out of the window, but she did not finish her sentence, of which the lawyer could guess the end: “Why had not Lousteau a little of your husband’s generosity of heart?” This information served, however, to cure Dinah of her melancholy; she threw herself into the whirl of fashion. She wished for success, and she achieved it; still, she did not make much way with women, and found it difficult to get introductions. In the month of March, Madame Piedefer’s friends the priests and Monsieur de Clagny made a fine stroke by getting Madame de la Baudraye appointed receiver of subscriptions for the great charitable work founded by Madame de Carcado. Then she was commissioned to collect from the Royal Family their donations for the benefit of the sufferers from the earthquake at Guadeloupe. The Marquise d’Espard, to whom Monsieur de Canalis read the list of ladies thus appointed, one evening at the Opera, said, on hearing that of the Countess: “I have lived a long time in the world, and I can remember nothing finer than the manoeuvres undertaken for the rehabilitation of Madame de la Baudraye.”