"She loves me in return--she loves me!" ejaculated Markham, half wild with mingled joy and apprehensions;--and, yielding to an impulse which no mortal under such circumstances could have conquered, he caught her in his arms. He kissed her pure and chaste brow--he felt her fragrant breath upon his cheek--her hair commingled with his own--and he murmured the words, "You love me?" A gentle voice breathed an affirmative in his ear; and he pressed his lips to hers to ratify that covenant of two fond hearts. Suddenly he recollected that Count Alteroni had declared that no one against whom there was even a suspicion of crime should ever form a connection with his family. Markham's high sense of honour told him in a moment that he had no right to secure the affections of a confiding and gentle girl whose father would never yield an assent to their union: his brain, already excited, now became inflamed almost to madness;--he abruptly turned aside from her who had just avowed her attachment to him,--he muttered some incoherent words which she did not comprehend, and rushed out of the room. He hurried to the garden at the back of the house, and walked rapidly up and down a shady avenue of trees which ran along the wall that bounded the enclosure on the side of the public road. By degrees he grew calm and relaxed the speed of his pace. He then fell into a long and profound meditation upon the occurrences of the last half hour. He was beloved by Isabella, it was true;--but never might he aspire to her hand;--never could it be accorded to him to lead her to the altar where their attachment might be ratified and _his_ happiness confirmed! An inseparable barrier seemed to oppose itself to his wishes; and he felt that no alternative remained to him but to put his former resolution into force, and take his departure homewards on the ensuing morning. Thus was it that he now reasoned. The moon shone brightly; and the heavens were studded with stars. As Markham was about to turn for the twentieth time at that end of the avenue which was the more remote from the house, the beams of the moon suddenly disclosed to him a human face peering over the wall at him. He started, and was about to utter an exclamation of alarm, when a well-known voice fell upon his ears. "Hush!" was the word first spoken; "I have just one question to ask you, and then one thing to tell you; and the last will just depend upon the first." "Wretch--miscreant--murderer!" exclaimed Richard; "nothing shall now prevent me from securing you on the behalf of justice." "Fool!" coolly returned the Resurrection Man--for it was he; "who can catch me in the darkness and the open fields?" "True!" cried Markham, stamping his foot with vexation. "But God grant that the day of retribution may come!"