Edmond then cast his eyes scrutinizingly at the agitated and embarrassed Mercedes, and then again on the gloomy and menacing Fernand.

This look told him all, and his anger waxed hot.
"I did not know, when I came with such haste to you, that I was to meet an enemy here." "An enemy!" cried Mercedes, with an angry look at her cousin.

"An enemy in my house, do you say, Edmond! If I believed that, I would place my arm under yours and go with you to Marseilles, leaving the house to return to it no more." Fernand's eye darted lightning.

"And should any misfortune occur to you, dear Edmond," she continued with the same calmness which proved to Fernand that the young girl had read the very innermost depths of his sinister thought, "if misfortune should occur to you, I would ascend the highest point of the Cape de Morgion and cast myself headlong from it." Fernand became deadly pale.

"But you are deceived, Edmond," she continued.