the room and cannot'—I, too, have felt as if
something constrained me against my will; as if,
in short, I were under that influence which Mr.
Vigors—whom I will never forgive for his conduct
to you—would ascribe to mesmerism. But
will you not come in and see Lilian again?"

"No, not to-night; but watch and heed her,
and if you see aught to make you honestly believe
that she regrets the rupture of the old tie
from which I have released her—why you
know, Mrs. Ashleigh, that—that——" My
voice failed—I wrung the good woman's hand,
and went my way.

I had always till then considered Mrs. Ashleigh
—if not as Mrs. Poyntz described her—'common-place
weak'—still of an intelligence somewhat
below mediocrity. I now regarded her with
respect as well as grateful tenderness; her plain
sense had divined what all my boasted knowledge
had failed to detect in my earlier intimacy
with Margrave—viz. that in him there was a something
present, or a something wanting, which forbade
love and excited fear. Young, beautiful,
wealthy, seemingly blameless in life as he was,
she would not have given her daughter's hand to
him!

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE next day my house was filled with visitors.
I had no notion that I had so many friends. Mr.
Vigors wrote me a generous and handsome letter,
owning his prejudices against me on account of
his sympathy with poor Dr. Lloyd, and begging
my pardon for what he now felt to have been
harshness, if not distorted justice. But what
most moved me, was the entrance of Strahan,
who rushed up to me with the heartiness of old
college days. " Oh, my dear Allen, can you ever
forgive me; that I should have disbelieved your
word—should have suspected you of abstracting
my poor cousin's memoir?"

'"Is it found, then?"

"Oh yes; you must thank Margrave. He,
clever fellow, you know, came to me on a visit
yesterday. He put me at once on the right
scent. Only guess; but you never can! It
was that wretched old housekeeper who purloined
the manuscript. You remember she came
into the room while you were looking at the
memoir. She heard us talk about it; her
curiosity was roused; she longed to know the
history of her old master, under his own
hand; she could not sleep; she heard me go up
to bed; she thought you might leave the book
on the table when you, too, went to rest.
She stole down stairs, peeped through the key-hole
of the lobby, saw you asleep, the book
lying before you, entered, took away the book
softly, meant to glance at its contents and to
return it. You were sleeping so soundly she
thought you would not wake for an hour; she
carried it into the library, leaving the door
open, and there began to pore over it; she
stumbled first on one of the passages in Latin;
she hoped to find some part in plain English,
turned over the leaves, putting her candle close
to them, for the old woman's eyes were dim,
when she heard you make some sound in your
sleep. Alarmed, she looked round; you were
moving uneasily in your seat, and muttering to
yourself. From watching you she was soon
diverted by the consequence of her own confounded
curiosity and folly. In moving, she had
unconsciously brought the poor manuscript
close to the candle; the leaves caught the flame;
her own cap and hand burning first made her
aware of the mischief done. She threw down the
book; her sleeve was in flames; she had first
to tear off the sleeve, which was, luckily for her,
not sewn to her dress. By the time she recovered
presence of mind to attend to the book
half its leaves were reduced to tinder. She did
not dare then to replace what was left of the
manuscript on your table; returned, with it, to
her. room, hid it, and resolved to keep her own
secret. I should never have guessed it; I had
never even spoken to her on the occurrence;
but when I talked over the disappearance of the
book to Margrave last night, and expressed my
disbelief of your story, he said, in his merry
way: ' But do you think Fenwick the only
person curious about your cousin's odd ways
and strange history? Why, every servant in the
household would have been equally curious.
You have examined your servants, of course?'
' No, I never thought of it.' ' Examine them
now, then. Examine especially that old housekeeper.
I observe a great change in her manner
since I came here, weeks ago, to look over the
house. She has something on her mind—I see
it in her eyes.' Then it occurred to me, too,
that the woman's manner had altered, and that
she seemed always in a tremble and a fidget. I
went at once to her room, and charged her with
stealing the book. She fell on her knees, and
told the whole story as I have told it to you,
and as I shall take care to tell it to all to whom
I have so foolishly blabbed my yet more foolish
suspicions of yourself. But can you forgive me,
old friend?"

"Heartily, heartily! And the book is burned?"

"See;" and he produced the mutilated manuscript.
Strange, the part burned—reduced, indeed,
to tinder—was the concluding part that
related to Haroun—to Grayle; no vestige of
that part left; the earlier portions were scorched
and mutilated, but, in some places, still decipherable;
but as my eye hastily ran over these
places, I saw only mangled sentences of the experimental
problems which the writer had so
minutely elaborated.

"Will you keep the manuscript as it is, and
as long as you like?" said Strahan.

"No, no; I will have nothing more to do
with it. Consult some other man of science.
And so this is the old woman's whole story?
No accomplice—none? No one else shared her
curiosity and her task?"

"No. Oddly enough, though, she made much
the same excuse for her pitiful folly that the
madman made for his terrible crime; she said
' the Devil put it into her head.' Of course he
did, as he puts everything wrong into any one's
head. That does not mend the matter."