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 myria