“No,” repeated Noirtier; “No.”

Valentine raised her head, struck dumb with astonishment. It was not so much the conviction that she was disinherited that caused her grief, but her total inability to account for the feelings which had provoked her grandfather to such an act. But Noirtier looked at her with so much affectionate tenderness that she exclaimed:

“Oh, grandpapa, I see now that it is only your fortune of which you deprive me; you still leave me the love which I have always enjoyed.”

“Ah, yes, most assuredly,” said the eyes of the paralytic, for he closed them with an expression which Valentine could not mistake.

“Thank you, thank you,” murmured she. The old man’s declaration that Valentine was not the destined inheritor of his fortune had excited the hopes of Madame de Villefort; she gradually approached the invalid, and said: