d your raw colonist, too, will
have the tastes of a pacha."

I made no answer. I had ceased to care who and what was my tempter. To
me his whole being was resolved into one problem: Had he a secret by
which death could be turned from Lilian?

But now, as the litter halted, from the long dark shadow which it cast
upon the turf the figure of a woman emerged and stood before us. The
outlines of her shape were lost in the loose folds of a black mantle,
and the features of her face were hidden by a black veil, except only
the dark, bright, solemn eyes. Her stature was lofty, her bearing
majestic, whether in movement or repose.

Margrave accosted her in some language unknown to me. She replied in
what seemed to me the same tongue. The tones of her voice were sweet,
but inexpressibly mournful. The words that they uttered appeared
intended to warn, or deprecate, or dissuade; but they called to
Margrave's brow a lowering frown, and drew from his lips a burst of
unmistakable anger. The woman rejoined, in the same melancholy music of
voice. And Margrave then, leaning his arm upon her shoulder, as he had
leaned it on mine, drew her away from the group into a neighbouring
copse of the flowering eucalypti,--mystic trees, never changing the hues
of their pale-green leaves, ever shifting the tints of their ash-gray,
shedding bark. For some moments I gazed on the two human forms, dimly
seen by the glinting moonlight through the gaps in the foliage. Then
turning away my eyes, I saw, standing close at my side, a man whom I had
not noticed before. His footstep, as it stole to me, had fallen on the
sward without sound. His dress, though Oriental, differed from that of
his companions, both in shape and colour; fitting close to the breast,
leaving the arms bare to the elbow, and of a uniform ghastly white, as
are the cerements of the grave. His visage was even darker than those of
the Syrians or Arabs behind him, and his features were those of a bird
of prey,--the beak of the eagle, but the eye of the vulture. His cheeks
were hollow; the arms, crossed on his breast, were long and fleshless.
Yet in that skeleton form there was a something which conveyed the idea
of a serpent's suppleness and strength; and as the hungry, watchful
eyes met my own startled gaze, I recoiled impulsively with that inward
warning of danger which is conveyed to man, as to inferior animals, in
the very aspect of the creatures that sting or devour. At my movement
the