e count?"

"The count."

"Oh," exclaimed Haidee, "is it not yet over?"

"I know not if it is finished, my beloved child," said Monte Cristo,
taking the young girl's hands; "but I do know you have nothing more to
fear."

"But it is the wretched"--

"That man cannot injure me, Haidee," said Monte Cristo; "it was his son
alone that there was cause to fear."

"And what I have suffered," said the young girl, "you shall never know,
my lord." Monte Cristo smiled. "By my father's tomb," said he, extending
his hand over the head of the young girl, "I swear to you, Haidee, that
if any misfortune happens, it will not be to me."

"I believe you, my lord, as implicitly as if God had spoken to me," said
the young girl, presenting her forehead to him. Monte Cristo pressed on
that pure beautiful forehead a kiss which made two hearts throb at once,
the one violently, the other heavily. "Oh," murmured the count, "shall
I then be permitted to love again? Ask M. de Morcerf into the
drawing-room," said he to Baptistin, while he led the beautiful Greek
girl to a private staircase.

We must explain this visit, which although expected by Monte Cristo, is
unexpected to our readers. While Mercedes, as we have said, was making
a similar inventory of her property to Albert's, while she was arranging
her jewels, shutting her drawers, collecting her keys, to leave
everything in perfect order, she did not perceive a pale and sinister
face at a glass door which threw light into the passage, from which
everything could be both seen and heard. He who was thus looking,
without being heard or seen, probably heard and saw all that passed in
Madame de Morcerf's apartments. From that glass door the pale-faced
man went to the count's bedroom and raised with a constricted hand the
curtain of a window overlooking the court-yard. He remained there ten
minutes, motionless and dumb, listening to the beating of his own heart.
For him those ten minutes were very long. It was then Albert, returning
from his meeting with the count, perceived his father watching for his
arrival behind a curtain, and turned aside. The count's eye expanded; he
knew Albert had insulted the count dreadfully, and that in every country
in the world such an insult would lead to a deadly duel. Albert returned
safely--then the count was revenged.

An indescribable ray of joy illumined that wretched countenance like the
last ray of the sun before it disappears behind the clouds which