shot to Mrs. Poyntz's side, and said, " Ten thousand
pardons for quitting you so soon, but the
clock warns me that I have an engagement elsewhere."
In another moment he was gone.

The dance halted, people seemed slowly
returning to their senses, looking at each other
bashfully and ashamed.

"I could not help it, dear," sighed Miss
Brabazon at last, sinking into a chair, and casting
her deprecating, fainting eyes upon the hostess.

"It is witchcraft," said fat Mrs. Bruce, wiping
her forehead.

"Witchcraft!" echoed Mrs. Poyntz; " it does
indeed look like it. An amazing and portentous
exhibition of animal spirits, and not to be
endured by the Proprieties. Where on earth
can that young savage have come from?"
"From savage lauds," said I. " So he says."
"Do not bring him here again," said Mrs.
Poyntz. " He would soon turn the Hill topsy-
turvy. But how charming! I should like to
see more of him," she added, in an under voice,
"if he would call on me some morning, and not
in the presence of those for whose Proprieties I
am responsible. Jane must be out in her ride
with the Colonel."

Margrave never again attended the patrician
festivities of the Hill. Invitations were poured
upon him, especially by Miss Brabazon and the
other old maids, but in vain.

"Those people," said he, "are too tame and
civilised for me; and so few young persons
among them. Even that girl Jane is only
young on the surface; inside, as old as the World
or her mother. I like youth, real youth— I am
young, I am young!"

And, indeed, I observed that he would attach
himself to some young person, often to some
child, as if with cordial and special favour,
yet for not more than an hour or so, never
distinguishing them by the same preference when
he next met them. I made that remark to him,
in rebuke of his fickleness, one evening when he
had found me at work on my Ambitious Book,
reducing to rule and measure the Laws of Nature.

"It is not fickleness," said he, " it is necessity."

"Necessity! Explain yourself."

"I seek to find what I have not found," said
he; "it is my necessity to seek it, and among
the young; and disappointed in one, I turn to
the other. Necessity again. But find it at last I
must."

"I suppose you mean what the young usually
seek in the young; and if, as you said the other
day, you have left love behind you, you now
wander back to re-find it."

"Tush! If I may judge by the talk of young
fools, love may be found every day by him who
looks out for it. What I seek is among the
rarest of all discoveries. You might aid me to
find it, and in so doing aid yourself to a knowledge
far beyond all that your formal experiments can bestow."

"Prove your words, and command my
services," said I, smiling somewhat disdainfully.

"You told me that you had examined into the
alleged phenomena of animal magnetism, and
proved some persons who pretend to the gift
which the Scotch call second sight to be
bungling impostors. You were right. I have seen
the clairvoyants who drive their trade in this
town; a common gipsy could beat them in their
own calling. But your experience must have
shown you that there are certain temperaments
in which the gift of the Pythoness is stored,
unknown to the possessor, undetected by the common
observer; but the signs of which should be
as apparent to the modern physiologist as they
were to the ancient priest."

"I at least, as a physiologist, am ignorant of
the signs— what are they?"

"I should despair of making you comprehend
them by mere verbal description. I could guide
your observation to distinguish them unerringly
were living subjects before us. But not one in a
million has the gift to an extent available for the
purposes to which the wise would apply it.
Many have imperfect glimpses, few, few indeed,
the unveiled, lucent sight. They who have but
the imperfect glimpses, mislead and dupe the
minds that consult them, because, being
sometimes marvellously right, they excite a
credulous belief in their general accuracy; and
as they are but translators of dreams in their
own brain, their assurances are no more to be
trusted than are the dreams of common-place
sleepers. But where the gift exists to perfection,
he who knows how to direct and to profit
by it should be able to discover all that he desires
to know for the guidance and preservation of his
own life. He will be forewarned of every danger,
forearmed in the means by which danger is
avoided. For the eye of the true Pythoness
matter has no obstruction, space no confines,
time no measurement."

"My dear Margrave, you may well say that
creatures so gifted are rare; and for my part, I
would as soon search for a unicorn, as, to use
your affected expression, for a Pythoness."

"Nevertheless, whenever there come across
the course of your practice some young creature
to whom all the evil of the world is as yet
unknown, to whom the ordinary cares and duties
of the world are strange and unwelcome; who
from the earliest dawn of reason has loved to sit
apart and to muse; before whose eyes visions
pass unsolicited; who converses with those who
are not dwellers on the earth, and beholds in the
space landscapes which the earth does not
reflect——-"

"Margrave, Margrave! of whom do you
speak?"

"Whose frame, though exquisitely sensitive,
has still a health and a soundness in which you
recognise no disease; whose mind has a
truthfulness that you know cannot deceive you, and a
simple intelligence too clear to deceive itself;
who is moved to a mysterious degree by all the