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M. Villefort stood where she had left him; but while his left hand supported his weight against the table, his right was thrust into his breast. One of the pistols lay at his feet.

She thought it was Death’s self that confronted her in his face, but he spoke to her, trying faintly to smile.

“Do not come in,” he said, “I have met with–an accident. It is nothing. Do not come in. A servant—-“

His last recollection was of her white face and white draperies as he fell, and somehow, dizzy, sick, and faint as he was, he seemed to hear her calling out, in a voice strangely like Jenny’s, “Arthur! Arthur!”

In less than half an hour the whole house was astir. Upstairs physicians were with the wounded man, downstairs Mrs. Trent talked and wept over her daughter, after the manner of all good women. She was fairly terrified by Bertha’s strange shudderings, quick, strained breath, and dilated eyes. She felt as if she could not reach her–as if she hardly made herself heard.

“You must calm yourself, Bertha,” she would say. “Try to calm yourself. We must hope for the best. Oh, how could it have happened!”

It was in the midst of this that a servant entered with a letter, which he handed to his mistress. The envelope bore upon it nothing but her own name.

She looked at it with a bewildered expression.

“For me?” she said.

“It fell from Monsieur’s pocket as we carried him upstairs,” replied the man.

“Don’t mind it now, Bertha,” said her mother, “Ah, poor M. Villefort!”

But Bertha had opened it mechanically and was reading it

At first it seemed as if it must have been written in a language she did not understand; but after the first few sentences a change appeared. Her breath came and went more quickly than before–a kind of horror grew in her eyes. At the last she uttered a low, struggling cry. The paper was crushed in her hand, she cast one glance around the room as if in bewildering search for refuge, and flung herself upon her mother’s breast.

“Save me, mother!” she said. “Help me! If he dies now, I shall go mad!”

Afterward, in telling her story at home, good Mrs. Trent almost broke down.

“Oh, Jenny!” she said. “Just to think of the poor fellow’s having had it in his pocket then! Of course I did not see it, but one can fancy that it was something kind and tender,–perhaps some little surprise he had planned for her. It seemed as if she could not bear it.”

M. Villefort’s accident was the subject of discussion for many days. He had purchased a wonderful pair of pistols as a gift for a young friend. How it had happened that one had been loaded none knew; it was just possible that he had been seized with the whim to load it himself–at all events, it had gone off in his hands. An inch–nay, half an inch–to the right, and Madame Villefort, who flew downstairs at the sound of the report, would only have found a dead man at her feet.

“Ma foi!” said M. Renard, repressing his smile; “this is difficult for Monsieur, but it may leave ‘la petite Dame’ at liberty.”

Madame de Castro flew at him with flashing eyes.

“Silence!” she said, “if you would not have me strike you with my cane.” And she looked as if she were capable of doing it.

Upon his sick-bed M, Villefort was continually haunted by an apparition–an apparition of a white face and white draperies, such as he had seen as he fell. Sometimes it was here, sometimes there, sometimes near him, and sometimes indistinct and far away. Sometimes he called out to it and tried to extend his arms; again he lay and watched, it murmuring gentle words, and smiling mournfully.

Mrs. Trent and the doctor were in despair. Madame Villefort obstinately refused to be forced from her husband’s room. There were times when they thought she might sink and die there herself. She would not even leave it when they obliged her to sleep. Having been slight and frail from ill health before, she became absolutely attenuated. Soon all her beauty would be gone.