he heart of a rose at sunset."

She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required
almost more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and
lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips
ere she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her
aspect with the emotions proper to a man the whole value of whose
existence was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with
this mood, however, was the philosophic investigation characteristic
of the man of science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A
heightened flush of the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath,
a quiver of the eyelid, a hardly perceptible tremor through the
frame,--such were the details which, as the moments passed, he
wrote down in his folio volume. Intense thought had set its stamp
upon every previous page of that volume; but the thoughts of years
were all concentrated upon the last.

While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal hand,
and not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable
impulse, he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however,
in the very act; and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep,
moved uneasily and murmured as if in remonstrance. Again Aylmer
resumed his watch. Nor was it without avail. The crimson hand,
which at first had been strongly visible upon the marble paleness
of Georgiana's cheek, now grew more faintly outlined. She remained
not less pale than ever; but the birthmark, with every breath that
came and went, lost somewhat of its former distinctness. Its presence
had been awful; its departure was more awful still. Watch the stain
of the rainbow fading out of the sky, and you will know how that
mysterious symbol passed away.

"By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!" said Aylmer to himself, in almost
irrepressible ecstasy. "I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success!
And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of
blood across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!"

He drew aside the window curtain and suffered the light of natural
day to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same
time he heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as
his servant Aminadab's expression of delight.

"Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!" cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort
of frenzy, "you have served me well! Matter and spirit--earth and
heaven--have both done their part in this! Laugh, t