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 return to us.' The old man died, as I have told you; had he lived, Mercedes, perchance, had not become the wife of another, for he would have been there to reproach her infidelity.

Fernand saw this, and when he learned of the old man's death he returned.