med beneath its calm expanse the same deep brilliancy which,
years before, had distinguished him from all other men and made the
Count of Monte-Cristo the idol of every salon in Paris and the hero of
every maiden's dream. Yet that face was not without its changes. Tears,
care, thought and sorrow had done their work; in the deep lines upon his
brow and cheek, in the silvery threads which thickly sprinkled his
night-black hair, and, more than all, in the mild light of those eyes
which once glowed only with vindictive hate or gratified revenge and in
the softened expression of those lips which once, in their stern beauty,
had but curled with scorn or quivered with rage could be read that the
lapse of time, though it might, indeed, have made him a sadder man, had
made him also a better one.

The husband and wife were alone. They still loved as warmly as ever,
and, if possible, more fondly than when first they were made one.

Dantes stretched himself out on the sofa, and Mercedes, dropping lower
upon the low ottoman at his side, passed her full and beautiful arm
around his waist and pressed her lips to his forehead. He returned the
embrace with warmth, and placing his own arm about her form, drew it
closely to his bosom. Thus they remained, clasped in each other's arms,
and thus they fixed on each other eyes beaming with love, passion,
bliss, happiness unutterable.

"My own Edmond!" murmured Mercedes. "At length you are again with
me--all my own!"

"Am I not always your own, dearest?" was the fond reply.

"But during the week past, I might almost say during the month past, you
have been compelled to be so often absent from me."

"Ah! love, you know I was not willingly absent!" was the quick answer.

"No--no--no--but it was hardly the more endurable for that," said the
lady, with a smile. "Oh! the anxiety of the last three days and nights!
Dearest, I do believe I have not slept three hours during the whole of
those three days and nights!"

"And I, dear, have slept not one!" was the laughing rejoinder.

"But all is over now, is it not?"

"In one sense all is over, and in another all now begins. The monarchy
is ended in France, I believe, forever. The Republic has begun, and, I
trust, will prove lasting."

"And all the grand objects for which you have been striving with your
noble colleagues for years and years are at length accomplished, are
they not?"

"That is a question, love, not easily answered. That the cau