s. She permits us indeed to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a
jealous patentee, on no account to make. Now, however, Aylmer resumed
these half-forgotten investigations; not, of course, with such hopes or
wishes as first suggested them; but because they involved much
physiological truth, and lay in the path of his proposed scheme for the
treatment of Georgiana.

As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory, Georgiana was cold
and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to
reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the
birth-mark upon the whiteness of her cheek, that he could not restrain a
strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.

"Aminadab! Aminadab!" shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the floor.

Forthwith, there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature,
but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was
grimed with the vapours of the furnace. This personage had been Aylmer's
under-worker during his whole scientific career, and was admirably
fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness, and the skill
with which, while incapable of comprehending a single principle, he
executed all the practical details of his master's experiments. With his
vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the indescribable
earthiness that encrusted him, he seemed to represent man's physical
nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale, intellectual face, were
no less apt a type of the spiritual element.

"Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab," said Aylmer, "and burn a
pastille."

"Yes, master," answered Aminadab, looking intently at the lifeless form
of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself:--"If she were my wife,
I'd never part with that birth-mark."

When Georgiana recovered consciousness, she found herself breathing an
atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had
recalled her from her death-like faintness. The scene around her looked
like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre rooms,
where he had spent his brightest years in recondite pursuits, into a
series of beautiful apartments, not unfit to be the secluded abode of a
lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous curtains, which imparted
the combination of grandeur and grace, that no other species of
adornment can achieve; and as they fell from the ceiling to the floor,
their rich and ponderous folds, concealing