to me. She described this house, with
yonder lights, and yon dancers. In her trance she saw us sitting
together, as we now sit. I accepted the invitation of our host, when he
suddenly accosted me on entering the town, confident that I should
meet you here, without even asking whether a person of your name were a
resident in the place; and now you know why I have so freely unbosomed
myself of much that might well make you, a physician, doubt the
soundness of my understanding. The same infant, whose vision has been
realized up to this moment, has warned me also that I am here at great
peril. What that peril may be I have declined to learn, as I have ever
declined to ask from the future what affects only my own life on this
earth. That life I regard with supreme indifference, conscious that
I have only to discharge, while it lasts, the duties for which it is
bestowed on me, to the best of my imperfect power; and aware that minds
the strongest and souls the purest may fall into the sloth habitual to
predestinarians, if they suffer the action due to the present hour to be
awed and paralyzed by some grim shadow on the future! It is only where,
irrespectively of aught that can menace myself, a light not struck out
of my own reason can guide me to disarm evil or minister to good, that
I feel privileged to avail myself of those mirrors on which things,
near and far, reflect themselves calm and distinct as the banks and the
mountain peak are reflected in the glass of a lake. Here, then, under
this roof, and by your side, I shall behold him who--Lo! the moment has
come,--I behold him now!"

As he spoke these last words, Sir Philip had risen, and, startled by
his action and voice, I involuntarily rose too. Resting one hand on
my shoulder, he pointed with the other towards the threshold of the
ballroom. There, the prominent figure of a gay group--the sole male
amidst a fluttering circle of silks and lawn, of flowery wreaths,
of female loveliness and female frippery--stood the radiant image of
Margrave. His eyes were not turned towards us. He was looking down, and
his light laugh came soft, yet ringing, through the general murmur.

I turned my astonished gaze back to Sir Philip; yes, unmistakably it was
on Margrave that his look was fixed. Impossible to associate crime with
the image of that fair youth! Eccentric notions, fantastic speculations,
vivacious egotism, defective benevolence,--yes. But crime! No!
impossible!

"Impossibl