"And the Countess seems transfixed also, though not by the same object," was the reply. "How excessively pale, yet how beautiful she is! That plain black dress, without ornament or jewel, and her raven hair, parted simply on her forehead, enhance her voluptuous charms infinitely more than could the most gorgeous costume. Heavens! what a happy man will he be who can call her his!"
"Amen!" said Debray, and the word seemed to rise from the very depths of his heart. "But she will never marry. Some early disappointment, even before her union with Morcerf, has withered her heart, and the terrible divorce which parted her from him, although she never loved him, will keep her single forever. Her first and only love is either dead or--worse--married to another."
"See, see, Lucien!" cried Beauchamp, hurriedly; "at whom does she gaze so intently, and yet so sadly? It cannot be Lamartine, for there sits his lovely young English wife at his side; nor can it be old Arago, nor young Le Verrier; and yet some one in that box it surely is."
"M. Dantès?" cried Debray.
"Impossible! That man seems hardly conscious that there are such beings as women. His whole soul is in affairs of state."
"His whole soul seems somewhere else just at present," exclaimed the Secretary, bitterly. "Look!"
"How dreadfully pale he is!" said Beauchamp; "and yet his eyes fairly blaze. Is it the Countess he gazes at?"
"Is it M. Dantès she gazes at?"
At that moment, amid the wild farewell of the mother to her son, upon the stage, the curtain came down, and at the same instant, M. Dantès hastily pressed his white handkerchief to his lips, and, leaning on the arms of Lamartine and Arago, hastily left the box.
"Ha! the Countess faints!" cried Debray, as the door closed on M. Dantès. "Do they know each other, then?"