The hapless Dantes was doomed.
As the marquis had promised, Villefort found the marquise and Renee in waiting.

He started when he saw Renee, for he fancied she was again about to plead for Dantes.

Alas, her emotions were wholly personal: she was thinking only of Villefort's departure.
She loved Villefort, and he left her at the moment he was about to become her husband.

Villefort knew not when he should return, and Renee, far from pleading for Dantes, hated the man whose crime separated her from her lover.
Meanwhile what of Mercedes?
She had met Fernand at the corner of the Rue de la Loge; she had returned to the Catalans, and had despairingly cast herself on her couch.

Fernand, kneeling by her side, took her hand, and covered it with kisses that Mercedes did not even feel.