ies so universally accorded
in the colony. I could not endure to expose to such rough strangers my
Lilian's mournful affliction, and that thought was not less intolerable
to Mrs. Ashleigh. I now hastily constructed a log-building a few hundred
yards from the house, and near the main track taken by travellers
through the spacious pastures. I transported to this building my books
and scientific instruments. In an upper story I placed my telescopes and
lenses, my crucibles and retorts. I renewed my chemical experiments; I
sought to invigorate my mind by other branches of science which I had
hitherto less cultured,--meditated new theories on Light and Colour,
collected specimens in Natural History, subjected animalcules to my
microscope, geological fossils to my hammer. With all these quickened
occupations of thought, I strove to distract myself from sorrow, and
strengthen my reason against the illusion of my fantasy. The Luminous
Shadow was not seen again on my wall, and the thought of Margrave
himself was banished.

In this building I passed many hours of each day; more and more
earnestly plunging my thoughts into depths of abstract study, as
Lilian's unaccountable dislike to my presence became more and more
decided. When I thus ceased to think that my life cheered and comforted
hers, my heart's occupation was gone. I had annexed to the apartment
reserved for myself in the log-hut a couple of spare rooms, in which I
could accommodate passing strangers. I learned to look forward to their
coming with interest, and to see them depart with regret; yet, for
the most part, they were of the ordinary class of colonial
adventurers,--bankrupt tradesmen, unlucky farmers, forlorn mechanics,
hordes of unskilled labourers, now and then a briefless barrister, or a
sporting collegian who had lost his all on the Derby. One day, however,
a young man of education and manners that unmistakably proclaimed the
cultured gentleman of Europe, stopped at my door. He was a cadet of
a noble Prussian family, which for some political reasons had settled
itself in Paris; there he had become intimate with young French nobles,
and living the life of a young French noble had soon scandalized his
German parents, forestalled his slender inheritance, and been compelled
to fly his father's frown and his tailor's bills. All this he told me
with a lively frankness which proved how much the wit of a German can
be quickened in the atmosphere of Paris. An old coll