alf hour.

"So late as that!" exclaimed Bertha, and sank into a chair with a faint
laugh. "Why, to-day is over," she said. "It is to-morrow."

M. Villefort had approached a side table. Upon it lay a peculiar-looking
oblong box.

"Ah," he said, softly, "they have arrived."

"What are they?" Bertha asked.

He was bending over the box to open it, and did not turn toward her, as
he replied:--

"It is a gift for a young friend of mine,--a brace of pistols. He has
before him a long journey in the East, and he is young enough to have a
fancy for firearms."

He was still examining the weapons when Bertha crossed the room on her
way up-stairs, and she paused an instant to look at them.

"They are very handsome," she said. "One could almost wear them as
ornaments."

"But they would have too threatening a look," he answered, lightly.

As he raised his eyes they met hers. She half started backward, moved by
a new sense of the haggardness of his face.

"You _are_ ill!" she exclaimed. "You are as colorless as marble."

"And you, too," he returned, still with the same tender lightness. "Let
us hope that our 'to-morrow' will find us both better, and you say it is
tomorrow now. Good-night!"

She went away without saying more. Weary as she was, she knew there was
no sleep for her, and after dismissing her maid, she threw herself upon
the lounge before the bedroom fire and lay there. To-night she felt as
if her life had reached its climax. She burst into a passion of tears.

"Jenny! Jenny!" she cried, "how I envy--how I envy you!"

The recollection of Jenny shining in her pretty gala dress, and
delighting in her birthday presents, and everybody else's pride and
affection, filled her with a morbid misery and terror. She covered her
face with her hands as she thought of it.

"Once," she panted, "as I looked at her tonight, for a moment I almost
hated her. Am I so bad as that?--am I?"

Scarcely two seconds afterward she had sprung to her feet and was
standing by the side of her couch, her heart beating with a rapid throb
of fright, her limbs trembling. A strange sound had fallen suddenly upon
the perfect silence of the night--a sound loud, hard, and sharp--the
report of a pistol! What dread seized her she knew not. She was across
the room and had wrenched the door open in an instant, then with flying
feet down the corridor and the staircase. But half-way down the stairs
she began to cry out aloud, "Arthur! Arthur!" not c