The Count of Monte Cristo

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companionship save that of an old man who was dying with despair. One
evening, after a day of accustomed vigil at the angle of two roads
leading to Marseilles from the Catalans, she returned to her home
more depressed than ever. Suddenly she heard a step she knew, turned
anxiously around, the door opened, and Fernand, dressed in the uniform
of a sub-lieutenant, stood before her. It was not the one she wished for
most, but it seemed as if a part of her past life had returned to her.
Mercedes seized Fernand's hands with a transport which he took for love,
but which was only joy at being no longer alone in the world, and seeing
at last a friend, after long hours of solitary sorrow. And then, it must
be confessed, Fernand had never been hated--he was only not precisely
loved. Another possessed all Mercedes' heart; that other was absent, had
disappeared, perhaps was dead. At this last thought Mercedes burst into
a flood of tears, and wrung her hands in agony; but the thought, which
she had always repelled before when it was suggested to her by another,
came now in full force upon her mind; and then, too, old Dantes
incessantly said to her, 'Our Edmond is dead; if he were not, he would