up to the bed and put in her head between me
and the count. The marquis saw her and gave a long, most wonderful moan.
He said something we couldn't understand, and he seemed to have a kind
of spasm. He shook all over and then closed his eyes, and the doctor
jumped up and took hold of my lady. He held her for a moment a bit
roughly. The marquis was stone dead! This time there were those there
that knew."

Newman felt as if he had been reading by starlight the report of highly
important evidence in a great murder case. "And the paper--the paper!"
he said, excitedly. "What was written upon it?"

"I can't tell you, sir," answered Mrs. Bread. "I couldn't read it; it
was in French."

"But could no one else read it?"

"I never asked a human creature."

"No one has ever seen it?"

"If you see it you'll be the first."

Newman seized the old woman's hand in both his own and pressed it
vigorously. "I thank you ever so much for that," he cried. "I want to
be the first, I want it to be my property and no one else's! You're the
wisest old woman in Europe. And what did you do with the paper?" This
information had made him feel extraordinarily strong. "Give it to me
quick!"

Mrs. Bread got up with a certain majesty. "It is not so easy as that,
sir. If you want the paper, you must wait."

"But waiting is horrible, you know," urged Newman.

"I am sure I have waited; I have waited these many years," said Mrs.
Bread.

"That is very true. You have waited for me. I won't forget it. And yet,
how comes it you didn't do as M. de Bellegarde said, show the paper to
some one?"

"To whom should I show it?" answered Mrs. Bread, mournfully. "It was not
easy to know, and many's the night I have lain awake thinking of it.
Six months afterwards, when they married Mademoiselle to her vicious old
husband, I was very near bringing it out. I thought it was my duty to do
something with it, and yet I was mightily afraid. I didn't know what
was written on the paper or how bad it might be, and there was no one
I could trust enough to ask. And it seemed to me a cruel kindness to do
that sweet young creature, letting her know that her father had written
her mother down so shamefully; for that's what he did, I suppose. I
thought she would rather be unhappy with her husband than be unhappy
that way. It was for her and for my dear Mr. Valentin I kept quiet.
Quiet I call it, but for me it was a weary quietness. It worried me
terribly, and it changed