FullReads

“How could you laugh at that detestable old woman?” he exclaimed on encountering Bertha later in the evening. “I wonder that M. Villefort would permit her to talk to you. She is a wicked, cynical creature, who has the hardihood to laugh at her sins instead of repenting of them.”

“Perhaps that is the reason she is so amusing,” said Bertha.

Edmondstone answered her with gentle mournfulness.

“What!” he said. “Have you begun to say such things? You too, Bertha”–

The laugh with which she stopped him was both light and hard.

“Where is M. Villefort?” she asked. “I have actually not seen him for fifteen minutes. Is it possible that Madame de Castro has fascinated him into forgetting me?”

Edmondstone went to his hotel that night in a melancholy mood. He even lay awake to think what a dreary mistake his cousin’s marriage was. She had been such a tender and easily swayed little soul as a girl, and now it really seemed as if she was hardening into a woman of the world. In the old times he had been wont to try his sonnets upon Bertha as a musician tries his chords upon his most delicate instrument. Even now he remembered certain fine, sensitive expressions of hers which had thrilled him beyond measure.

“How could she marry such a fellow as that–how could she?” he groaned. “What does it mean? It must mean something.”

He was pale and heavy-eyed when he wandered round to the Villeforts’ the following morning. M. Villefort was sitting with Bertha and reading aloud. He stopped to receive their visitor punctiliously and inquire after his health.

“M. Edmondstone cannot have slept well,” he remarked.

“I did not sleep at all,” Edmondstone answered, “and naturally have a headache.”

Bertha pointed to a wide lounge of the pouf order.

“Then go to sleep now,” she said; “M. Villefort will read. When I have a headache he often reads me to sleep, and I am always better on awaking.”

Involuntarily Edmondstone half frowned. Absurdly enough, he resented in secret this amiability on the part of M. Villefort toward his own wife. He was quite prepared to be severe upon the reading, but was surprised to be compelled to acknowledge that M. Villefort read wondrously well, and positively with hints of delicate perception. His voice was full and yet subtly flexible. Edmondstone tried to protest against this also, but uselessly. Finally he was soothed, and from being fretfully wide-awake suddenly passed into sleep as Bertha had commanded. How long his slumber lasted he could not have told. All at once he found himself aroused and wide-awake as ever. His headache had departed; his every sense seemed to have gained keenness. M. Villefort’s voice had ceased, and for a few seconds utter, dead silence reigned. Then he heard the fire crackling, and shortly afterward a strange, startling sound–a sharp, gasping sob!

The pang which seized upon him was strong indeed. In one moment he seemed to learn a thousand things by intuition–to comprehend her, himself, the past. Before he moved he knew that Villefort was not in the room, and he had caught a side glimpse of the pretty blue of Bertha’s dress.

But he had not imagined the face he saw when he turned his head to look at her. She sat in a rigid attitude, leaning against the high cushioned back of her chair, her hands clasped above her head. She stared at the fire with eyes wide and strained with the agony of tears unshed, and amid the rush of all other emotions he was peculiarly conscious of being touched by the minor one of his recognition of her look of extreme youth–the look which had been wont to touch people in the girl, Bertha Trent. He had meant to speak clearly, but his voice was only a loud whisper when he sprang up, uttering her name.

“Bertha! Bertha! Bertha!” as he flung himself upon his knees at her side.

Her answer was an actual cry, and yet it reached no higher pitch than his own intense whisper.