slight curve of the lip which is half smile and half
sneer, "if, in my account of myself, I omitted
what I cannot explain, and you cannot conceive:
let me first ask how many of the commonest actions
of the commonest men are purely involuntary
and wholly inexplicable? When, for instance,
you open your lips and utter a sentence,
you have not the faintest idea beforehand what
word will follow another; when you move a
muscle, can you tell me the thought that prompts
to the movement? And, wholly unable thus to
account for your own simple sympathies between
impulse and act, do you believe that there exists
a man upon earth who can read all the riddles
in the heart and brain of another? Is it not
true that not one drop of water, one atom of
matter, ever really touches another? Between
each and each there is always a space, however
infmitesimally small. How, then, could the
world go on if every man asked another to
make his whole history and being as lucid as
daylight before he would buy and sell with him?
All interchange and alliance rest but on this,
—an interest in common;—you and I have
established that interest. All the rest, all you ask
more, is superfluous. Could I answer each
doubt you would raise, still, whether the answer
should please or revolt you, your reason would,
come back to the same starting-point—viz. In
one definite proposal have we two an interest in
common?"

And again Margrave laughed, not in mirth
but in mockery. The laugh and the words that
preceded it were not the laugh and the words of
the young. Could it be possible that Louis
Grayle had indeed revived to false youth in the
person of Margrave, such might have been his
laugh and such his words. The whole mind of
Margrave seemed to have undergone change
since I last saw him; more rich in idea, more
crafty even in candour, more powerful, more
concentred. As we see in our ordinary experience
that some infirmity, threatening dissolution,
brings forth more vividly the reminiscences
of early years, when impressions were
vigorously stamped, so I might have thought,
that as Margrave neared the tomb, the memories
he had retained from his former existence in a
being more amply endowed, more formidably
potent, struggled back to the brain, and the
mind that had lived in Louis Grayle moved the
lips of the dying Margrave.

"For the powers and the arts that it equally
puzzles your reason to assign or deny to me,"
resumed my terrible guest, "I will say briefly but
this: they come from faculties stored within myself,
and doubtless conduce to my self-preservation
—faculties more or less, perhaps (so Van Helmont
asserts), given to all men though dormant in
most;—vivid and active in me because in me self-
preservation has been and yet is the strong
master-passion, or instinct; and because I have
been taught how to use and direct such faculties
by disciplined teachers; some by Louis Grayle,
the enchanter; some by my nurse, the singer of
charmed songs. But in much that I will to
have done, I know no more than yourself how
the agency acts. Enough for me to will what
I wished, and sink calmly in slumber, sure that
the will would work somehow its way. But
when I have willed to know what, when known,
should shape my own courses, I could see,
without aid from your pitiful telescopes, all objects
howsoever afar. What wonder in that? Have you
no learned puzzle-brain metaphysicians, who tell
you that space is but an idea, all this palpable
universe an idea in the mind and no more!
Why am I an enigma as dark as the Sibyl's, and
your metaphysicians as plain as a hornbook?"
Again the sardonic laugh. "Enough: let what
I have said obscure or enlighten your guesses,
we come back to the same link of union, which
binds man to man, bids states arise from the
desert, and foemen embrace as brothers. I need
you and you need me; without your aid my
life is doomed; without my secret the breath
will have gone from the lips of your Lilian
before the sun of to-morrow is red on yon
hilltops."

"Fiend or juggler," I cried in rage, "you shall
not so enslave and enthral me by this mystic
farrago and jargon. Make your fantastic
experiment on yourself if you will: trust to your
arts and your powers. My Lilian's life shall
not hang on your fiat. I trust it—to——"

"To what—to man's skill? Hear what the
sage of the college shall tell you, before I ask
you again for your aid. Do you trust to God's
saving mercy? Ah, of course you believe in a
God? Who, except a philosopher, can reason a
Maker away? But that the Maker will alter
His courses to hear you; that, whether or not
you trust in Him, or in your doctor, it will change
by a hair-breadth the thing that must be—do
you believe this, Allen Fenwick?"

And there sate this reader of hearts! a boy
in his aspect, mocking me and the greybeards of
schools.

I could listen no more; I turned to the door
and fled down the stairs, and heard, as I fled, a
low chant; feeble and faint, it was still the old
barbaric chant, by which the serpent is drawn
from its hole by the charmer.

     LOVE AND MARRIAGE IN PERSIA.

WHEN a poor man has a pretty daughter
about eleven or twelve years old—the age at
which Persian ladies are supposed to have
matrimonial views—a marriage-broker waits upon
him, and endeavours to strike a bargain for her.
The broker, generally a moolah or priest, will
perhaps offer from two to four hundred tomauns,
or, say, from one to two hundred pounds English
money, as a fair price for a young lady. The
bargain completed, the girl probably becomes
a wife of some khan, rich enough to afford
himself such a luxury, and to give the broker a
handsome profit on the transaction. It is usually
all a matter of business, and a man posting up"
his accounts at the end of the year might
note down that upon such a day he bought
a lady, pretty much as if he had purchased a line
Turcoman horse or an English rifle: only the