"Oh, Frank, can you think thus meanly of me?" he cried, completely carried away by her wild beauty, her agitation, her tears. "My promise once made cannot be taken back. I know what I promise; I know the future. I have risen from the grave of my past life; you, too, shall rise from the grave of your past life. We will begin life anew. We will walk the world together! Oh, would that this hour, this moment, I could make my compact good, beyond all chance of change, all danger of repeal!" "Do you really wish thus, Gulian?" She raised her face, and her soul was in her eyes. "Is that the deepest wish of your heart?" "Frank, I swear it!" She took the white cross from his neck,--held it for a moment over her head; it glittered brightly in the light; and then she wound the chain about her own neck, and the white cross glittered on her proud bosom. "Take this in exchange"--she took the golden cross from her breast, and wound its chain about his neck; the cross glitters over his heart--"in witness of our mutual pledge. And Gulian,--" there was a look--an extended hand--"Come!" She led him from the light into the shadows, and--while his every pulse bounded as with a new life--from the hall. And, as they passed from the hall, Leo the Tenth, clad in his cardinal attire, led his young nephew lovingly among the shadows of the vast apartment,--now pausing to refresh himself with sparkling Heidsick, and now twining his arm about the nephew's waist, trying to soothe _her_ mind upon some doctrinal point: "Dearest Julia," he whispered, as they paused for a moment in the shadow of a pillar. "Dearest Doctor," she responded--that is, the nephew, clad in blue frock-coat and trowsers; "you don't think that my husband ever will--" The sentence was interrupted. A grave hidalgo, attired in black velvet, richly embroidered with gold, confronted the Doctor, otherwise Leo the Tenth, and whispered earnestly in his ear. "Impossible!" responded Leo the Tenth, shaking his head. "Impossible, my dear Tarleton!" "It _must_ be," answered the hidalgo, emphatically. "A quiet room up stairs, and no one present save myself, the bridegroom and the bride." "But my name will appear on the certificate," hesitated the Doctor, "and questions may be asked as to the _place_ in which this marriage was celebrated, and _how_ I came to be there." "Pshaw! You are strangely scrupulous," returned the hidalgo. "I tell you, Doctor, it is a matter of the last importance, and cannot be put off. Then you can celebrate the marriage a _second_ time, in _another place_, and--" he whispered a few emphatic words in the Doctor's ear. Leo the Tenth was troubled, but he saw no way of escape.