erect and menacing, the hard sneer on her resolute
lip, the red glitter in her remorseless eye.

CHAPTER LVIII.

If ever my heart vowed itself to Lilian, the
vow was now the most trustful and the most
sacred. I had relinquished our engagement
before, but then her affection seemed, no matter
from what cause, so estranged from me, that
though I might be miserable to lose her, I
deemed that she would be unhappy in our union.
Then, too, she was the gem and darling of the
little world in which she lived; no whisper
assailed her; now, I knew that she loved me. I
knew that her estrangement had been involuntary,
I knew that appearances wronged her, and
that they never could be explained. I was in
the true position of man to woman: I was the
shield, the bulwark, the fearless confiding
protector! Resign her now because the world
babbled, because my career might be impeded,
because my good name might be impeached—
resign her, and, in that resignation, confirm all that was
said against her! Could I do so, I should be the
most craven of gentlemen, the meanest of men!

I went to Mrs. Ashleigh, and entreated her to
hasten my union with her daughter, and fix the
marriage day.

I found the poor lady dejected and distressed.
She was now sufficiently relieved from the
absorbing anxiety for Lilian to be aware of the
change on the face of that World which the
woman I had just quitted personified and
concentred; she had learned the cause from the
bloodless lips of Miss Brabazon.

"My child—my poor child!" murmured the
mother. " And she so guileless—so sensitive!
Could she know what is said, it would kill her.
She would never marry you, Allen. She would
never bring shame to you!"

"She never need learn the barbarous calumny.
Give her to me, and at once; patients, fortune,
fame, are not found only at L——. Give her to
me at once. But let me name a condition:
I have a patrimonial independence—I have
amassed large savings—I have my profession and
my repute. I cannot touch her fortune—I cannot
—never can! Take it while you live; when
you die, leave it to accumulate for her children, if
children she have; not to me; not to her—
unless I am dead or ruined!"

"Oh, Allen, what a heart!—what a heart
No, not heart, Allen—that bird in its cage has a
heart: soul—what a soul!"

CHAPTER LIX.

How innocent was Lilian's virgin blush when
I knelt to her and prayed that she would forestall
the date that had been fixed for our union, and
be my bride before the breath of the autumn had
withered the pomp of the woodland and silenced
the song of the birds. Meanwhile, I was so fearfully
anxious that she should risk no danger of
hearing, even of surmising, the cruel slander
against her—should meet no cold contemptuous
looks—above all, should be safe from the
barbed talk of Mrs. Poyntz—that I insisted on
the necessity of immediate change of air and
scene. I proposed that we should all three
depart, the next day, for the banks of my own
beloved and native Windermere. By that pure
mountain air Lilian's health would be soon re-
established; in the church hallowed to me by the
graves of my fathers our vows could be plighted.
No calumny had ever cast a shadow over those
graves. I felt as if my bride would be safer in
the neighbourhood of my mother's tomb.

I carried my point: it was so arranged. Mrs.
Ashleigh, however, was reluctant to leave before
she had seen her dear friend, Margaret Poyntz.
I had not the courage to tell her what she might
expect to hear from that dear friend, but, as
delicately as I could, I informed her that I had
already seen the Queen of the Hill, and contradicted
the gossip that had reached her; but
that as yet, like other absolute sovereigns, the
Queen of the Hill thought it politic to go
with the popular stream, reserving all check
on its direction till the rush of its torrent
might slacken; and that it would be infinitely
wiser in Mrs. Ashleigh to postpone conversation
with Mrs. Poyntz until Lilian's return to
L——as my wife; slander by that time would
have wearied itself out, and Mrs. Poyntz
(assuming her friendship to Mrs. Ashleigh to be
sincere) would then be enabled to say with
authority to her subjects, "Dr. Fenwick alone
knows the facts of the story, and his marriage
with Miss Ashleigh refutes all the gossip to her
prejudice."

I made, that evening, arrangements with a
young and rising practitioner; to secure
attendance on my patients during my absence. I
passed the greater part of the night in drawing
up memoranda to guide my proxy in each case,
however humble the sufferer. This task finished,
I chanced, in searching for a small microscope,
the wonders of which I thought might interest
and amuse Lilian, to open a drawer in which I
kept the manuscript of my cherished Physiological
Work, and, in so doing, my eye fell upon
the wand which I had taken from Margrave. I
had thrown it into that drawer on my return
home after restoring Lilian to her mother's house,
and, in the anxiety which had subsequently
preyed upon my mind, had almost forgotten the
strange possession I had as strangely acquired.
There it now lay, the instrument of agencies
over the mechanism of nature which no doctrine
admitted by my philosophy could accept, side by
side with the presumptuous work which had
analysed the springs by which nature is moved,
and decided the principles by which reason metes
out, from the inch of its knowledge, the plan of
the Infinite Unknown.

I took up the wand, and examined it curiously.
It was evidently the work of an age far remote
from our own, scored over with half-obliterated
characters in some Eastern tongue, perhaps no
longer extant. I found that it was hollow within.
A more accurate observation showed, in the