ement,--he pays the penalty of crime
committed by his ancestors or himself, or he has braved, by arrogating
equality with the gods, the mysterious calamity which the gods alone can
inflict. But I, no descendant of Pelops, no OEdipus boastful of a wisdom
which could interpret the enigmas of the Sphynx, while ignorant even of
his own birth--what had I done to be singled out from the herd of men
for trials and visitations from the Shadowland of ghosts and sorcerers?
It would be ludicrously absurd to suppose that Dr. Lloyd's dying
imprecation could have had a prophetic effect upon my destiny; to
believe that the pretences of mesmerizers were specially favoured by
Providence, and that to question their assumptions was an offence of
profanation to be punished by exposure to preternatural agencies. There
was not even that congruity between cause and effect which fable seeks
in excuse for its inventions. Of all men living, I, unimaginative
disciple of austere science, should be the last to become the sport
of that witchcraft which even imagination reluctantly allows to the
machinery of poets, and science casts aside into the mouldy lumber-room
of obsolete superstition.

Rousing my mind from enigmas impossible to solve, it was with intense
and yet most melancholy satisfaction that I turned to the image of
Lilian, rejoicing, though with a thrill of awe, that the promise
so mysteriously conveyed to my senses had, hereto, been already
fulfilled,--Margrave had left the town; Lilian was no longer subjected
to his evil fascination. But an instinct told me that that fascination
had already produced an effect adverse to all hope of happiness for me.
Lilian's love for myself was gone. Impossible otherwise that she--in
whose nature I had always admired that generous devotion which is
more or less inseparable from the romance of youth--should have never
conveyed to me one word of consolation in the hour of my agony and
trial; that she, who, till the last evening we had met, had ever been
so docile, in the sweetness of a nature femininely submissive to my
slightest wish, should have disregarded my solemn injunction, and
admitted Margrave to acquaintance, nay, to familiar intimacy,--at
the very time, too, when to disobey my injunctions was to embitter my
ordeal, and add her own contempt to the degradation imposed upon my
honour! No, her heart must be wholly gone from me; her very nature
wholly warped. A union between us had become impossible