responding to this amiable gesture, remained mute and
trembling. 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. "You have no enemy here -- there is no one
but Fernand, my brother, who will grasp your hand as a
devoted friend."

And at these words the young girl fixed her imperious look
on the Catalan, who, as if fascinated by it, came slowly