de la Baudraye might seem, he was really an unhoped-for good match for
Mademoiselle Dinah Piedefer. But what was the hidden motive of this
country landowner when, at forty-four, he married a girl of seventeen;
and what could his wife make out of the bargain? This was the text of
Dinah's first meditations.

The little man never behaved quite as his wife expected. To begin
with, he allowed her to take the five precious acres now wasted in
pleasure grounds round La Baudraye, and paid, almost with generosity,
the seven or eight thousand francs required by Dinah for improvements
in the house, enabling her to buy the furniture at the Rougets' sale
at Issoudun, and to redecorate her rooms in various styles--Mediaeval,
Louis XIV., and Pompadour. The young wife found it difficult to
believe that Monsieur de la Baudraye was so miserly as he was reputed,
or else she must have great influence with him. The illusion lasted a
year and a half.

After Monsieur de la Baudraye's second journey to Paris, Dinah
discovered in him the Artic coldness of a provincial miser whenever
money was in question. The first time she asked for supplies she
played the sweetest of the comedies of which Eve invented the secret;
but the little man put it plainly to his wife that he gave her two
hundred francs a month for her personal expenses, and paid Madame
Piedefer twelve hundred francs a year as a charge on the lands of La
Hautoy, and that this was two hundred francs a year more than was
agreed to under the marriage settlement.

"I say nothing of the cost of housekeeping," he said in conclusion.
"You may give your friends cake and tea in the evening, for you must
have some amusement. But I, who spent but fifteen hundred francs a