“If I had seen her then,” he cried inwardly, “I might have read her heart—and my own.”
M. Renard, riding a very tall horse in the Bois, passed him and raised his eyebrows at the sight of his pallor and his fagged yet excited look.
“There will be a new sonnet,” he said to himself. “A sonnet to Despair, or Melancholy, or Loss.”
Afterward, when society became a little restive and eager, M. Renard looked on with sardonic interest.
“That happy man, M. Villefort,” he said to Madame de Castro, “is a good soul—a good soul. He has no small jealous follies,” and his smile was scarcely a pleasant thing to see.
“There is nothing for us beyond this past,” Bertha had said, and Edmondstone had agreed with her hopelessly.
But he could not quite break away. Sometimes for a week the Villeforts missed him, and then again they saw him every day. He spent his mornings with them, joined them in their drives, at their opera-box, or at the entertainments of their friends. He also fell into his old place in the Trent household, and listened with a vague effort at interest to Mrs. Trent’s maternal gossip about the boys’ college expenses, Bertha’s household, and Jenny’s approaching social début He was continually full of a feverish longing to hear of Bertha,—to hear her name spoken, her ingoings and out-comings discussed, her looks, her belongings.
“The fact is,” said Mrs. Trent, as the winter advanced, “I am anxious about Bertha. She does not look strong. I don’t know why I have not seen it before, but all at once I found out yesterday that she is really thin. She was always slight and even a little fragile, but now she is actually thin. One can see the little bones in her wrists and fingers. Her rings and her bracelets slip about quite loosely.”
“And talking of being thin, mother,” cried Jenny, who was a frank, bright sixteen-year-old, “look at cousin Ralph himself. He has little hollows in his cheeks, and his eyes are as much too big as Bertha’s. Is the sword wearing out the scabbard, Ralph? That is what they always say about geniuses, you know.”
“Ralph has not looked well for some time,” said Mrs. Trent. “As for Bertha, I think I shall scold her a little, and M. Villefort too. She has been living too exciting a life. She is out continually. She must stay at home more and rest. It is rest she needs.”