st adroitly managed. The house at
Courberrie belonged to Danglars, and had been the scene of many ignoble
orgies. The opening through which Esperance looked was not more than
thirty feet from Jane. He called, but she could not hear him. Then all
was suddenly dark. The lights returned in a few minutes, and Jane was
seen alone.

"Jane! Jane!" cried Esperance. Suddenly a door opened. Esperance saw an
old man enter the room. He went up to Jane with a hideous smile on his
face. It was Laisangy.

Of all the crimes that Benedetto had committed, this was the most
infamous!

Esperance caught the iron bars and shook them violently, and with such
enormous strength that one of them was loosened. Esperance passed
through them and stood in a corridor, but there was a sheet of plate
glass still between him and Jane. This glass he broke with his clenched
hands, and Esperance sprang at the throat of Danglars and threw him to
the other end of the room. Then, taking Jane in his arms, he cried:

"Jane! my beloved--do you not hear me? I am Monte-Cristo."

"Monte-Cristo!" repeated a hoarse voice.

Esperance half turned.

Danglars had staggered up from the floor, and was gazing at Esperance
with eyes fairly starting from his head. With his deadly pallor and a
gash on his cheek from the glass through which he had passed, Esperance
bore a striking resemblance to his father. He looked as Dantes looked
the day his infamous companion betrayed him at Marseilles. Danglars was
appalled.

"Edmond Dantes!" he cried in agony, raising his arms high above his
head, and wildly clutching the air for support. Then he fell forward on
his face in an attack of apoplexy.

Esperance laid Jane again on the sofa, and ran to his assistance. He
lifted him from the floor. The banker was dead.

Esperance was as if stunned. The strange events, coming one after the
other, affected his reason. He believed himself the victim of a hideous
nightmare. He heard a sigh and turned back to Jane, who seemed to be
trying to throw off the stupor that had weighed her down. The effect of
the narcotic was probably passing off. She raised her hands and pressed
them to her forehead. Esperance forgot everything else, and falling at
Jane's feet he cried, in an agony of entreaty.

"Oh! Jane, awake! I must take you from this terrible place. Jane,
awake!"

The girl's eyes moved.

"Who speaks my name?" she whispered.

"It is I--I, who loves--Esperance!"

Jane opened her ey