thought she might sink and die there herself. She would not even leave it when they obliged her to sleep. Having been slight and frail from ill health before, she became absolutely attenuated. Soon all her beauty would be gone.

"Do you know," said Mrs. Trent to her husband, "I have found out that she always carries that letter in her breast? I see her put her hand to it in the strangest way a dozen times a day."

One night, awakening from a long sleep to a clearer mental consciousness than usual, M. Villefort found his apparition standing over him.

She stood with one hand clinched upon her breast, and she spoke to him.

"Arthur!" she said,—"Arthur, do you know me?"

He answered her, "Yes."

She slipped down upon her knees, and held up in her hand a letter crushed and broken.

"Try to keep your mind clear while you listen to me," she implored. "Try—try! I must tell you, or I shall die. I am not the bad woman you think me. I never had read it—I had not seen it. I think he must have been mad. Once I loved him, but he killed my love himself. I could not have been bad like that, Jenny!—mother!—Arthur! believe me! believe me!"

In this supreme moment of her anguish and shame she forgot all else. She stretched forth her hands, panting.

"Believe me! It is true! Try to understand! Some one is coming! Say one word before it is too late!"

"I understand," he whispered, "and I believe." He made a weak effort to touch her hand, but failed. He thought that perhaps it was the chill and numbness of death which stole over him and held him bound. When the nurse, whose footsteps they had heard, entered, she found him lying with glazed eyes, and Madame Villefort fallen in a swoon at the bedside.

And yet, from this time forward the outside world began to hear that his case was not so hopeless after all.

"Villefort will possibly recover," it was said at first; then, "Villefort improves, it seems;" and, at last, "Villefort is out of danger Who would have thought it?"

Nobody, however, could say that Madame had kept pace with her husband. When Monsieur was sufficiently strong to travel, and was advised to do so, there were grave doubts as to the propriety of his wife's accompanying him.

But she would not listen to those doubts.

"I will not stay in Paris," she said to her mother. "I want to be free from it, and Jenny has promised to go with us."

They were to go into Normandy, and the day before their departure Ralph Edmondstone came to bid them good-bye.

Of the three he was by far the most haggard figure, and when Bertha came down to meet him in the empty drawing-room, he became a wretched figure with a broken, hopeless air, For a few seconds Bertha did not speak, but stood a pace or two away looking at him. It seemed, in truth, as she waited there in her dark, nun-like dress, that nearly all her beauty had left her. There remained only her large sad eyes and pretty hair, and the touching look of extreme youth. In her hand she held the crushed letter.

"See!" she said at last, holding this out to him. "I am not so bad—so bad as that."

He caught it from her hand and tore it into fragments. He was stabbed through and through with shame and remorse. After all, his love had been strong enough here, and his comprehension keen enough to have made him repent in the dust of the earth, in his first calm hour, the insult he had put upon her.

"Forgive me!" he cried; "oh, forgive me!"

The few steps between them might have been a myriad of miles.

"I did love you—long ago," she said; "but you never thought of me. You did not understand me then—nor afterward. All this winter my love has been dying a hard death. You tried to keep it alive, but—you did not understand. You only humiliated and tortured me—And I knew that if I had loved you more, you would have loved me less. See!" holding up her thin hand, "I have been worn out in the struggle between my unhappiness and remorse and you."

"You do not know what love is!" he burst forth, stung into swift resentment.

A quick sob broke from her.

"Yes I do." she answered. "I—I have seen it"

"You mean M. Villefort!" he cried in desperate jealous misery. "You think that he——"

She pointed to the scattered fragments of the letter.

"He had that in his pocket when he fell," she said, "He thought that I had read it. If I had been your wife, and you had thought so, would you have thought that I was worth trying to save—as he tried to save me?"

"What!" he exclaimed, shamefacedly. "Has he seen it?"

"Yes," she answered, with another sob, which might have been an echo of the first. "And that is the worst of all."

There was a pause, during which he looked down at the floor, and even trembled a little.

"I have done you more wrong than I thought," he said.

"Yes," she replied; "a thousand-fold more."

It seemed as if there might have been more to say, but it was not said.

In a little while he roused himself with an effort.

"I am not a villain!" he said. "I can do one thing. I can go to Villefort—if you care."

She did not speak. So he moved slowly away until he reached the door. With his hand upon the handle he turned and looked back at her.

"Oh, it is good-bye—good-bye!" he almost groaned.

"Yes."

He could not help it—few men could have done so. His expression was almost fierce as he spoke his next words.

"And you will love him—yes, you will love him."

"No," she answered, with bitter pain. "I am not worthy."

It was a year or more before the Villeforts were seen in Paris again, and Jenny enjoyed her wanderings with them wondrously. In fact, she was the leading member of the party. She took them where she chose,—to queer places, to ugly places, to impossible places, but never from first to last to any place where there were not, or at least had not been, Americans as absurdly erratic as themselves.

The winter before their return they were at Genoa, among other places; and it was at Genoa that one morning, on opening a drawer, Bertha came upon an oblong box, the sight of which made her start backward and put her hand to her beating side. M. Villefort approached her hurriedly. An instant later, however, he started also and shut the drawer.

"Come away," he said, taking her hand gently. "Do not remain here."

But he was pale, too, and his hand was unsteady. He led her to the window and made her sit down.

"Pardon me," he said. "I should not have left them there."

"You did not send them to your friend?" she faltered.

"No."

He stood for a moment or so, and looked out of the window at the blue sea which melted into the blue sky, at the blue sky which bent itself into the blue sea, at the white sails flecking the deep azure, at the waves hurrying in to break upon the sand.

"That"—he said at length, tremulously, and with pale lips—"that was false."

"Was false!" she echoed.

"Yes," hoarsely, "it was false. There was no such friend. It was a lie—they were meant only for myself."

She uttered a low cry of anguish and dread.

"Ah, mon Dieu!" he said. "You could not know. I understood all, and had been silent. I was nothing—a jest—'le Monsieur de la petite Dame,' as they said,—only that. I swore that I would save you. When I bade you adieu that night, I thought it was my last farewell. There was no accident. Yes—there was one. I did not die, as I had intended. My hand was not steady enough. And since then——"

She rose up, crying out to him as she had done on that terrible night—

"Arthur! Arthur!"

He came closer to her.

"Is it true," he said,—"is it true that my prayers have not been in vain? Is it true that at last—at last, you have learned—have learned——"

She stretched forth her arms to him.

"It is true!" she cried. "Yes, it is true!—it is true!"