nt, and the French traveller
to the fumigations of the African conjuror.

But, as I came to that conclusion, I was seized with an intense
curiosity to examine for myself those chemical agencies with which
Sir Philip Derval appeared so familiar; to test the contents in that
mysterious casket of steel. I also felt a curiosity no less eager, but
more, in spite of myself, intermingled with fear, to learn all that Sir
Philip had to communicate of the past history of Margrave. I could but
suppose that the young man must indeed be a terrible criminal, for a
person of years so grave, and station so high, to intimate accusations
so vaguely dark, and to use means so extraordinary, in order to enlist
my imagination rather than my reason against a youth in whom there
appeared none of the signs which suspicion interprets into guilt.

While thus musing, I lifted my eyes and saw Margrave himself there
at the threshold of the ballroom,--there, where Sir Philip had first
pointed him out as the criminal he had come to L---- to seek and disarm;
and now, as then, Margrave was the radiant centre of a joyous group. Not
the young boy-god Iacchus, amidst his nymphs, could, in Grecian frieze
or picture, have seemed more the type of the sportive, hilarious
vitality of sensuous nature. He must have passed unobserved by me, in my
preoccupation of thought, from the museum and across the room in which
I sat; and now there was as little trace in that animated countenance of
the terror it had exhibited at Sir Philip's approach, as of the change
it had undergone in my trance or my fantasy.

But he caught sight of me, left his young companions, came gayly to my
side.

"Did you not ask me to go with you into that museum about half an hour
ago, or did I dream that I went with you?"

"Yes; you went with me into that museum."

"Then pray what dull theme did you select to set me asleep there?"

I looked hard at him, and made no reply. Somewhat to my relief, I now
heard my host's voice,--

"Why, Fenwick, what has become of Sir Philip Derval?"

"He has left; he had business." And, as I spoke, again I looked hard on
Margrave.

His countenance now showed a change; not surprise, not dismay,
but rather a play of the lip, a flash of the eye, that indicated
complacency,--even triumph.

"So! Sir Philip Derval! He is in L----; he has been here to-night? So!
as I expected."

"Did you expect it?" said our host. "No one else did. Who could have
told you?"