The general character of the room was more
cheerful than the statelier chambers I had hitherto
passed through, for it had still the look of habitation.
The arm-chair by the fireplace; the kneehole
writing-table beside it; the sofa near the
recess of a large bay-window, with book-prop and
candlestick screwed to its back; maps, coiled in
their cylinders, ranged under the cornice; low
strong safes, skirting two sides of the room, and
apparently intended to hold papers and title-
deeds; seals carefully affixed to their jealous
locks. Placed on the top of these old-fashioned
receptacles were articles familiar to modern
use; a fowling-piece here; fishing-rods there;
two or three simple flower vases; a pile of
music-books; a box of crayons. All in this room
seemed to speak of residence and ownership—
of the idiosyncrasies of a lone single man, it
is true, but of a man of one's own time a country
gentleman of plain habits but not uncultivated
tastes.

I moved to the window; it opened by a sash
upon a large balcony, from which a wooden
stair wound to a little garden, not visible in front
of the house, surrounded by a thick grove of
evergreens, through which one broad vista was cut;
and that vista was closed by a view of the
mausoleum.

I stepped out into the garden—a patch of
sward with a fountain in the centre—and
parterres, now more filled with weeds than flowers.
At the left corner was a tall wooden summerhouse
or pavilion—its door wide open. "Oh,
that's where Sir Philip used to study many a long
summer's night," said the steward.

"What! in that damp pavilion?"

"It was a pretty place enough then, sir; but
it is very old. They say as old as the room you
have just left."

"Indeed, I must look at it, then." The
walls of this summer-house had once been painted
in the arabesques of the Renaissance period;
but the figures were now scarcely traceable. The
woodwork had started in some places, and the
sunbeams stole through the chinks and played
on the floor, which was formed from old tiles
quaintly tesselated and in triangular patterns,
similar to those I had observed in the chimney-
piece. The room, in the pavilion, was large,
furnished with old wormeaten tables and settles.

"It was not only here that Sir Philip studied,
but sometimes in the room above," said the
steward.

"How do you get to the room above? Oh, I
see; a staircase in the angle." I ascended the
stairs with some caution, for they were crooked
and decayed; and, on entering the room above,
comprehended at once why Sir Philip had
favoured it.

The cornice of the ceiling rested on pilasters,
within which the compartments were formed into
open unglazed arches, surrounded by a railed
balcony. Through these arches, on three sides
of the room, the eye commanded a magnificent
extent of prospect. On the fourth side the
view was bounded by the mausoleum. In this
room was a large telescope, and on stepping into
the balcony, I saw that a winding stair mounted
thence to a platform on the top of the pavilion
—perhaps once used as an observatory by
Forman himself.

"The gentleman who was here to-day was
very much pleased with this look-out, sir," said
the housekeeper.

"Who would not be? I suppose Sir Philip
has a taste for astronomy."

"I dare say, sir," said the steward, looking
grave; "he likes most out-of-the-way things."

The position of the sun now warned me that my
time pressed, and that I should have to ride fast
to reach my new patient at the hour appointed.
I therefore hastened back to my horse, and
spurred on, wondering whether, in that chain of
association which so subtly links our pursuits in
manhood to our impressions in childhood, it was
the Latin inscription on the chimney-piece that
had originally biased Sir Philip Derval's literary
taste towards the mystic jargon of the books at
which I had contemptuously glanced.

CHAPTER XXIX.

I DID not see Margrave the following day, but
the next morning, a little after sunrise, he walked
into my study, according to his ordinary habit.

"So you know something about Sir Philip
Derval? " said I. "What sort of man is he?"

"Hateful!" cried Margrave; and then checking
himself, burst out into his merry Laugh. "Just
like my exaggerations! I am not acquainted
with anything to his prejudice. I came across
his track once or twice in the East. Travellers
are always apt to be jealous of each other."

"You are a strange compound of cynicism and
credulity. But I should have fancied that you
and Sir Philip would have been congenial spirits,
when I found, among his favourite books, Van
Helmont and Paracelsus. Perhaps you, too, study
Swedenborg, or, worse still, Ptolemy and Lilly?"

"Astrologers? No! They deal with the
future! I live for the day; only I wish the day
never had a morrow!"

"Have you not, then, that vague desire for the
something beyond; that not unhappy, but grand
discontent with the limits of the immediate
Present, from which Man takes his passion for
improvement and progress, and from which some
sentimental philosophers have deduced an
argument in favour of his destined immortality."

"Eh!" said Margrave, with as vacant a stare
as that of a peasant whom one has addressed in
Hebrew. "What farrago of words is this? I
do not comprehend you."

"With your natural abilities," I asked with
interest, "do you never feel a desire for fame?"

"Fame! Certainly not. I cannot even
understand it!"

"Well, then, would you have no pleasure in
the thought that you had rendered a service to
humanity?"

Margrave looked bewildered. After a moment's
pause, he took from the table a piece of bread