no longer hope that
you would voluntarily lend yourself to my will. Meanwhile, I had found
in her the light of a loftier knowledge than that of your science;
through that knowledge, duly heeded and cultivated, I hoped to divine
what I cannot of myself discover. Therefore I deepened over her mind
the spells I command; therefore I have drawn her hither as the loadstone
draws the steel, and therefore I would have borne her with me to the
shores to which I was about this night to sail. I had cast the inmates
of the house and all around it into slumber, in order that none might
witness her departure; had I not done so, I should have summoned others
to my aid, in spite of your threat."

"And would Lilian Ashleigh have passively accompanied you, to her own
irretrievable disgrace?"

"She could not have helped it; she would have been unconscious of her
acts; she was, and is, in a trance; nor, had she gone with me, would
she have waked from that state while she lived; that would not have been
long."

"Wretch! and for what object of unhallowed curiosity do you exert an
influence which withers away the life of its victim?"

"Not curiosity, but the instinct of self-preservation. I count on no
life beyond the grave. I would defy the grave, and live on."

"And was it to learn, through some ghastly agencies, the secret of
renewing existence, that you lured me by the shadow of your own image on
the night when we met last?"

The voice of Margrave here became very faint as he answered me, and his
countenance began to exhibit the signs of an exhaustion almost mortal.

"Be quick," he murmured, "or I die. The fluid which emanates from that
wand, in the hand of one who envenoms that fluid with his own hatred
and rage, will prove fatal to my life. Lower the wand from my forehead!
low--low,--lower still!"

"What was the nature of that rite in which you constrained me to share?"

"I cannot say. You are killing me. Enough that you were saved from a
great danger by the apparition of the protecting image vouchsafed to
your eye; otherwise you would--you would--Oh, release me! Away! away!"

The foam gathered to his lips; his limbs became fearfully convulsed.

"One question more: where is Lilian at this moment? Answer that
question, and I depart."

He raised his head, made a visible effort to rally his strength, and
gasped out,--

"Yonder. Pass through the open space up the cliff, beside a thorn-tree;
you will find her there, where sh