w you," he would say, "you are so
finely orthodox and well controlled. It was not so with you once,
Bertha. Don't--don't become that terrible thing, a fine lady, and worse
still, a fine lady who is _desillusionee_"

It baffled him that she never appeared much moved, by his charges.
Certainly she lived the life of a "fine lady,"--a brilliant life,
a luxurious one, a life full of polite dissipation. Once, when in a
tenderly fraternal mood, he reproached her with this also, she laughed
at him frankly.

"It is absinthe," she said. "It is my absinthe at least, and who does
not drink a little absinthe--of one kind or another?"

He was sincerely convinced that from this moment he understood and had
the right to pity and watch over her. He went oftener to see her. In her
presence he studied her closely, absent he brooded over her. He became
impatiently intolerant of M. Villefort, and prone to condemn him, he
scarcely knew for what.

"He has no dignity--no perception," was his parental decision. "He has
not even the delicacy to love her, or he would have the tenderness to
sacrifice his own feelings and leave her to herself. I could do it for a
woman I loved."

But M. Villefort was always there,--gravely carrying the shawls, picking
up handkerchiefs, and making himself useful.

"_Imbecile!_" muttered M. Renard under cover of his smile and his
mustache, as he stood near his venerable patroness the first time she
met the Villeforts.

"Blockhead!" stealthily ejaculated that amiable aristocrat. But though
she looked grimly at M. Villefort, M. Renard was uncomfortably uncertain
that it was he to whom she referred.

"Go and bring them to me," she commanded, "Go and bring them to me
before some one else engages them. I want to talk to that girl."

It was astonishing how agreeable she made herself to her victims
when she had fairly entrapped them. Bertha hesitated a little before
accepting her offer of a seat at her side, but once seated she found
herself oddly amused. When Madame de Castro chose to rake the embers of
her seventy years, many a lively coal discovered itself among the ashes.

Seeing the two women together, Edmondstone shuddered in fastidious
protest.

"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 re