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.
“Do you know,” said Mrs. Trent to her husband, “I have found out that she always carries that letter in her breast? I see her put her hand to it in the strangest way a dozen times a day.”
One night, awakening from a long sleep to a clearer mental consciousness than usual, M. Villefort found his apparition standing over him.
She stood with one hand clinched upon her breast, and she spoke to him.
“Arthur!” she said,—“Arthur, do you know me?”
He answered her, “Yes.”
She slipped down upon her knees, and held up in her hand a letter crushed and broken.
“Try to keep your mind clear while you listen to me,” she implored. “Try—try! I must tell you, or I shall die. I am not the bad woman you think me. I never had read it—I had not seen it. I think he must have been mad. Once I loved him, but he killed my love himself. I could not have been bad like that, Jenny!—mother!—Arthur! believe me! believe me!”
In this supreme moment of her anguish and shame she forgot all else. She stretched forth her hands, panting.
“Believe me! It is true! Try to understand! Some one is coming! Say one word before it is too late!”