e," I said aloud. As I spoke, the group had moved on. Margrave
was no longer in sight. At the same moment some other guests came from
the ballroom, and seated themselves near us.

Sir Philip looked round, and, observing the deserted museum at the end
of the corridor, drew me into it.

When we were alone, he said in a voice quick and low, but decided,--

"It is of importance that I should convince you at once of the nature
of that prodigy which is more hostile to mankind than the wolf is to the
sheepfold. No words of mine could at present suffice to clear your
sight from the deception which cheats it. I must enable you to judge for
yourself. It must be now and here. He will learn this night, if he has
not learned already, that I am in the town. Dim and confused though his
memories of myself may be, they are memories still; and he well knows
what cause he has to dread me. I must put another in possession of his
secret. Another, and at once! For all his arts will be brought to bear
against me, and I cannot foretell their issue. Go, then; enter that
giddy crowd, select that seeming young man, bring him hither. Take care
only not to mention my name; and when here, turn the key in the door, so
as to prevent interruption,--five minutes will suffice."

"Am I sure that I guess whom you mean? The young light-hearted man,
known in this place under the name of Margrave? The young man with the
radiant eyes, and the curls of a Grecian statue?"

"The same; him whom I pointed out. Quick, bring him hither."

My curiosity was too much roused to disobey. Had I conceived that
Margrave, in the heat of youth, had committed some offence which placed
him in danger of the law and in the power of Sir Philip Derval, I
possessed enough of the old borderer's black-mail loyalty to have given
the man whose hand I had familiarly clasped a hint and a help to escape.
But all Sir Philip's talk had been so out of the reach of common-sense,
that I rather expected to see him confounded by some egregious illusion
than Margrave exposed to any well-grounded accusation. All, then, that
I felt as I walked into the ballroom and approached Margrave was that
curiosity which, I think, any one of my readers will acknowledge that,
in my position, he himself would have felt.

Margrave was standing near the dancers, not joining them, but talking
with a young couple in the ring. I drew him aside.

"Come with me for a few minutes into the museum; I wish to talk to