t?"

"Good God!" he cried, as he fell into his chair again, his brow sinking
into his hands.

"I have read it," said Madame, with a tragic gesture, "and I choose to
place one stumbling-block in the path that would lead her to an old age
like mine. I do not like your Americans; but I have sometimes seen in
her girl's face a proud, heroic endurance of the misery she has brought
upon herself, and it has moved me. And this let ter--you should read it,
to see how such a man can plead. It is a passionate cry of despair--it
is a poem in itself. I, myself, read it with sobs in my throat and tears
in my eyes. 'If you love me!--if you have ever loved me!' he cries, 'for
God's sake!--for love's sake!--if there is love on earth--if there is a
God in heaven, you will not let me implore you in vain!' And his prayer
is that she will leave Paris with him tonight--. to-night! There!
Monsieur, I have done. Behold the letter! Take it or leave it, as you
please." And she flung it upon the floor at his feet.

She paused a moment, wondering what he would do.

He bent down and picked the letter up.

"I will take it," he said.

All at once he had become calm, and when he rose and uttered his last
words to her, there was upon his face a faint smile.

"I, too," he said,--"I, too, Madame, suffer from a mad and hopeless
passion, and thus can comprehend the bitterness of M. Edmondstone's
pangs. I, too, would implore in the name of love and God,--if I might,
but I may not." And so he took his departure.

Until evening Bertha did not see him. The afternoon she spent alone and
in writing letters, and having completed and sealed the last, she went
to her couch and tried to sleep. One entering the room, as she lay upon
the violet cushions, her hands at her sides, her eyes closed, might well
have been shocked. Her spotless pallor, the fine sharpness of her face,
the shadows under her eyes, her motionlessness, would have excused
the momentary feeling. But she was up and dressed for dinner when M.
Villefort presented himself. Spring though it was, she was attired in a
high, close dress of black velvet, and he found her almost cowering over
the open fire-place. Strangely enough, too, she fancied that when she
looked up at him she saw him shiver, as if he were struck with a slight
chill also.

"You should not wear that," he said, with a half smile at her gown.

"Why?" she asked.

"It makes you so white--so much like a too early lily. But--but pe