se Sir
Philip has a taste for astronomy."

"I dare say, sir," said the steward, looking grave; "he likes most
out-of-the-way things."

The position of the sun now warned me that my time pressed, and that I
should have to ride fast to reach my new patient at the hour appointed.
I therefore hastened back to my horse, and spurred on, wondering
whether, in the chain of association which so subtly links our pursuits
in manhood to our impressions in childhood, it was the Latin inscription
on the chimneypiece that had originally biassed Sir Philip Derval's
literary taste towards the mystic jargon of the books at which I had
contemptuously glanced.

CHAPTER XXIX.

I did not see Margrave the following day, but the next morning, a little
after sunrise, he walked into my study, according to his ordinary habit.

"So you know something about Sir Philip Derval?" said I. "What sort of a
man is he?"

"Hateful!" cried Margrave; and then checking himself, burst out into
his merry laugh. "Just like my exaggerations! I am not acquainted with
anything to his prejudice. I came across his track once or twice in the
East. Travellers are always apt to be jealous of each other."

"You are a strange compound of cynicism and credulity; but I should have
fancied that you and Sir Philip would have been congenial spirits, when
I found, among his favourite books, Van Helmont and Paracelsus. Perhaps
you, too, study Swedenborg, or, worse still, Ptolemy and Lilly?"

"Astrologers? No! They deal with the future! I live for the day; only I
wish the day never had a morrow!"

"Have you not, then that vague desire for the something beyond,--that
not unhappy, but grand discontent with the limits of the immediate
Present, from which man takes his passion for improvement and progress,
and from which some sentimental philosophers have deduced an argument in
favour of his destined immortality?"

"Eh!" said Margrave, with as vacant a stare as that of a peasant whom
one has addressed in Hebrew. "What farrago of words is this? I do not
comprehend you."

"With your natural abilities," I asked with interest, "do you never feel
a desire for fame?"

"Fame? Certainly not. I cannot even understand it!"

"Well, then, would you have no pleasure in the thought that you had
rendered a service to humanity?"

Margrave looked bewildered; after a moment's pause, he took from the
table a piece of bread that chanced to be there, opened the window, and
threw t