Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame | Page 9

Behold the letter! Take it or leave it, as you please." And she flung it upon the floor at his feet.
She paused a moment, wondering what he would do.
He bent down and picked the letter up.
"I will take it," he said.
All at once he had become calm, and when he rose and uttered his last words to her, there was upon his face a faint smile.
"I, too," he said,--"I, too, Madame, suffer from a mad and hopeless passion, and thus can comprehend the bitterness of M. Edmondstone's pangs. I, too, would implore in the name of love and God,--if I might, but I may not." And so he took his departure.
Until evening Bertha did not see him. The afternoon she spent alone and in writing letters, and having completed and sealed the last, she went to her couch and tried to sleep. One entering the room, as she lay upon the violet cushions, her hands at her sides, her eyes closed, might well have been shocked. Her spotless pallor, the fine sharpness of her face, the shadows under her eyes, her motionlessness, would have excused the momentary feeling. But she was up and dressed for dinner when M. Villefort presented himself. Spring though it was, she was attired in a high, close dress of black velvet, and he found her almost cowering over the open fire-place. Strangely enough, too, she fancied that when she looked up at him she saw him shiver, as if he were struck with a slight chill also.
"You should not wear that," he said, with a half smile at her gown.
"Why?" she asked.
"It makes you so white--so much like a too early lily. But--but perhaps you thought of going out?"
"No," she answered; "not to-night."
He came quite close to her.
"If you are not too greatly fatigued," he said, "it would give me happiness to take you with me on my errand to your mother's house. I must carry there my little birthday gift to your sister," smiling again.
An expression of embarrassment showed itself upon her face.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "to think that I had forgotten it! She will feel as if I did not care for her at all."
She seemed for the moment quite unhappy.
"Let me see what you have chosen."
He drew from his pocket a case and opened it.
"Oh," she cried, "how pretty and how suitable for a girl!"
They were the prettiest, most airy set of pearls imaginable.
She sat and looked at them for a few seconds thoughtfully, and then handed them back.
"You are very good, and Jenny will be in ecstasies," she said.
"It is a happiness to me to give her pleasure," he returned. "I feel great tenderness for her. She is not like the young girls I have known. Her innocence is of a frank and noble quality, which is better than ignorance. One could not bear that the slightest shadow of sin or pain should fall upon her. The atmosphere surrounding her is so bright with pure happiness and the courage of youth."
Involuntarily he held out his hand.
"Will you"--he began. His voice fell and broke. "Will you go with me?" he ended.
He saw that she was troubled.
"Now?" she faltered.
"Yes--now."
There was a peculiar pause,--a moment, as it seemed to him, of breathless silence. This silence she broke by her rising slowly from her seat.
"Yes," she responded, "I will go. Why should I not?"
It was midnight when they left the Trents', and Jenny stood upon the threshold, a bright figure in a setting of brightness, and kissed her hand to them as they went down the steps.
"I hope you will be better to-morrow, Arthur," she said.
He turned quickly to look up at her.
"I?"
"Yes. You look so tired. I might say haggard, if it was polite."
"It would not be polite," said Bertha, "so don't say it. Good-night, Jenny!"
But when they were seated in the carriage she glanced at her husband's face.
"Are you unwell?" she asked.
He passed his hand quickly across his forehead.
"A little fatigued," he replied. "It is nothing. To-morrow--to-morrow it will be all over."
And so silence fell upon them.
As they entered the drawing-room a clock chimed the half 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