"If I come to-morrow," he was saying, "you will be at home, Bertha?"

"Yes."

"Then, good-night,"--holding out his hand,--"only I wish so that
you would go to the Aylmers instead of home. That _protegee_ of Mrs.
Aylmer's--the little singing girl--would touch your heart with her
voice. On hearing her, one thinks at once of some shy wild bird high in
a clear sky,--far enough above earth to have forgotten to be timid."

"Yes," came quietly from the darkness within the carriage; "but I am too
tired to care about voices just now. Good-night, Ralph!"

M. Renard's reply of "God knows, Paris does not," to Madame de Castro's
query as to why Madame Villefort had married her husband, contained an
element of truth, and yet there were numbers of Parisian-Americans, more
especially the young, well-looking, and masculine, who at the time
the marriage had taken place had been ready enough with sardonic
explanations.

"There are women who are avaricious enough to sell their souls," they
cried; "and the maternal Trent is one of them. The girl is only to blame
for allowing herself to be bullied into the match."

"But the weak place in this argument," said M. Renard, "is, that the
people are too rich to be greatly influenced by money. If there had been
a title,--but there was no title."

Neither did Bertha Trent comport herself like a cowed creature. She took
her place in society as Madame Villefort in such a manner as could give
rise to no comment whatever; only one or two of the restless inquisitive
wondered if they had not been, mistaken in her. She was, as I have said
already, a childishly small and slight creature,--the kind of woman to
touch one with suggestions of helplessness and lack of will; and yet,
notwithstanding this, a celebrated artist--a shrewd, worldly-wise old
fellow--who had painted her portrait, had complained that he was not
satisfied with it because he had not done justice to "the obstinate
endurance in her eye."

It was to her cousin, Ralph Edmondstone, he had said this with some
degree of testiness, and Edmondstone had smiled and answered:--

"What! have you found that out? Few people do."

At the time of the marriage Edmondstone had been in Rome singeing his
wings in the light of the eyes of a certain Marchesa who was his latest
poetic passion. She was not his first fancy, nor would she be his last,
but she had power enough for the time being to have satisfied the most
exacting of women.

He was at