d of miles.

"I did love you--long ago," she said; "but you never thought of me. You
did not understand me then--nor afterward. All this winter my love has
been dying a hard death. You tried to keep it alive, but--you did not
understand. You only humiliated and tortured me--And I knew that if I
had loved you more, you would have loved me less. See!" holding up her
thin hand, "I have been worn out in the struggle between my unhappiness
and remorse and you."

"You do not know what love is!" he burst forth, stung into swift
resentment.

A quick sob broke from her.

"Yes I do." she answered. "I--I have seen it"

"You mean M. Villefort!" he cried in desperate jealous misery. "You
think that he----"

She pointed to the scattered fragments of the letter.

"He had that in his pocket when he fell," she said, "He thought that I
had read it. If I had been your wife, and you had thought so, would you
have thought that I was worth trying to save--as he tried to save me?"

"What!" he exclaimed, shamefacedly. "Has he seen it?"

"Yes," she answered, with another sob, which might have been an echo of
the first. "And that is the worst of all."

There was a pause, during which he looked down at the floor, and even
trembled a little.

"I have done you more wrong than I thought," he said.

"Yes," she replied; "a thousand-fold more."

It seemed as if there might have been more to say, but it was not said.

In a little while he roused himself with an effort.

"I am not a villain!" he said. "I can do one thing. I can go to
Villefort--if you care."

She did not speak. So he moved slowly away until he reached the door.
With his hand upon the handle he turned and looked back at her.

"Oh, it is good-bye--good-bye!" he almost groaned.

"Yes."

He could not help it--few men could have done so. His expression was
almost fierce as he spoke his next words.

"And you will love him--yes, you will love _him_."

"No," she answered, with bitter pain. "I am not worthy."

*****

It was a year or more before the Villeforts were seen in Paris again,
and Jenny enjoyed her wanderings with them wondrously. In fact, she
was the leading member of the party. She took them where she chose,--to
queer places, to ugly places, to impossible places, but never from first
to last to any place where there were not, or at least had not been,
Americans as absurdly erratic as themselves.

The winter before their return they were at Genoa, among ot