e would determine whether he were to linger out years, or drop
dead in the midst of a breath. No king on his guarded throne could
keep his life if I, in my private station, should deem that the
welfare of millions justified me in depriving him of it."

"Why do you keep such a terrific drug?" inquired Georgiana in horror.

"Do not mistrust me, dearest," said her husband, smiling; "its
virtuous potency is yet greater than its harmful one. But see!
here is a powerful cosmetic. With a few drops of this in a vase
of water, freckles may be washed away as easily as the hands are
cleansed. A stronger infusion would take the blood out of the cheek,
and leave the rosiest beauty a pale ghost."

"Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my cheek?" asked
Georgiana, anxiously.

"O, no," hastily replied her husband; "this is merely superficial.
Your case demands a remedy that shall go deeper."

In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute
inquiries as to her sensations, and whether the confinement of
the rooms and the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her.
These questions had such a particular drift that Georgiana began
to conjecture that she was already subjected to certain physical
influences, either breathed in with the fragrant air or taken with
her food. She fancied likewise, but it might be altogether fancy,
that there was a stirring up of her system,--a strange, indefinite
sensation creeping through her veins, and tingling, half painfully,
half pleasurably, at her heart. Still, whenever she dared to look
into the mirror, there she beheld herself pale as a white rose
and with the crimson birthmark stamped upon her cheek. Not even
Aylmer now hated it so much as she.

To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found it necessary
to devote to the processes of combination and analysis, Georgiana
turned over the volumes of his scientific library. In many dark
old tomes she met with chapters full of romance and poetry. They
were the works of the philosophers of the Middle Ages, such as
Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and the famous
friar who created the prophetic Brazen Head. All these antique
naturalists stood in advance of their centuries, yet were imbued
with some of their credulity, and therefore were believed, and
perhaps imagined themselves to have acquired from the investigation
of nature a power above nature, and from physics a sway over the
spiritual world. Har