till haunts your mind did really, by some occult,
sinister magnetism, guide the madman to murder, did influence the
servant-woman's vulgar desire to pry into the secrets of her ill-fated
master, or the old maid's covetous wish and envious malignity: what
could this awful magician do more than any commonplace guilty adviser,
to a mind predisposed to accept the advice?"

"You forget one example which destroys your argument,--the spell which
this mysterious fascinator could cast upon a creature so pure from all
guilt as Lilian!"

"Will you forgive me if I answer frankly?"

"Speak."

"Your Lilian is spotless and pure as you deem her, and the fascination,
therefore, attempts no lure through a sinful desire; it blends with
its attraction no sentiment of affection untrue to yourself. Nay, it is
justice to your Lilian, and may be melancholy comfort to you, to state
my conviction, based on the answers my questions have drawn from her,
that you were never more cherished by her love than when that love
seemed to forsake you. Her imagination impressed her with the illusion
that through your love for her you were threatened with a great
peril. What seemed the levity of her desertion was the devotion of
self-sacrifice. And, in her strange, dream-led wanderings, do not think
that she was conscious of the fascination you impute to this mysterious
Margrave: in her belief it was your own guardian angel that guided her
steps, and her pilgrimage was ordained to disarm the foe that menaced
you, and dissolve the spell that divided her life from yours! But had
she not, long before this, willingly prepared herself to be so deceived?
Had not her fancies been deliberately encouraged to dwell remote from
the duties we are placed on the earth to perform? The loftiest faculties
in our nature are those that demand the finest poise, not to fall from
their height and crush all the walls that they crown. With exquisite
beauty of illustration, Hume says of the dreamers of 'bright fancies,'
'that they may be compared to those angels whom the Scriptures represent
as covering their eyes with their wings.' Had you been, like my nephew,
a wrestler for bread with the wilderness, what helpmate would your
Lilian have been to you? How often would you have cried out in
justifiable anger, 'I, son of Adam, am on earth, not in Paradise! Oh,
that my Eve were at home on my hearth, and not in the skies with the
seraphs!' No Margrave, I venture to say, could have su