the asylum, and had left it there to be shown or
not to the patient as the proper authorities
might think best. It was decided at last to
give it to her, and strangely enough, the
possession of this portrait appeared to calm, rather
than excite her. She would sit gazing upon it
as a devotee might regard the image of some
favourite saint, and would thrust it away into
some place of security if any one approached
her, as though she feared that it might be taken
from her.

But just in proportion as the mental condition
of Jane Cantanker showed some signs of
improvement, so did her bodily health give way
and fail. The body's strength declined day by
day, almost hour by hour, and those who knew
well the phenomena of such cases, foretold
confidently that it would not be long before this
woman died; but predicted also that, as the end
drew near, the mind, whose faculties had been
so terribly distorted, would surely be restored
to reason.

And so indeed it proved. Imperfectly at first
—just as in the sacred narrative the blind man
recovering his sight, "saw men as trees walking"
—so imperfectly her slowly recovering
reason received the true images of the events
which had passed, but received them more
completely, and saw them with less distortion, as
continually the mind of the poor woman grew
clearer, and gained with each succeeding day
increase of strength, till at the last it came
about that she understood all, and knew all, as
the reader understands and knows, and praying
that if it were possible she might see Gabrielle
before she died, was ministered to at the end of
her days by the woman whom she had hated and
persecuted, and yielded up the ghost, with a
face bending over her which might have been
the face of an angel.

She died with that portrait of the mistress
whom she had loved clasped firmly in her hand,
and it was Gabrielle still, who, when all was
over, begged earnestly that it might not be
taken away from her.

What remains to be told?

Not much now. If the reader imagines that
any of those remarks of a disparaging sort
which were called forth in the course of the trial
just reported, and which bore reference to the
favourite pursuits of our friend Cornelius
Vampi, served, in any degree, to lower the art
mystic in the esteem of that illustrious man, I
can only say that the reader is mistaken most
grievously. True to his principles as of old,
that small observatory of his, which to some
might seem a poor common-place garret, is still
to him an enchanted chamber, while that window
from which he looks out upon the stars, is still
for him a door of communication through which
the messages reach him from the unseen world.
For him, the moon is a great deal more than a
world of desolate mountains and barren valleys
—a chaos of extinct volcanoes. For him, the
planets are something other than mighty spheres
hanging in the void, sustained by forces whose
nature men can guess at, obedient in their
movements to ascertained laws. For him, there
are still good influences, and evil, in the
heavenly bodies, which act upon the destinies
of the sons of men.

Ah, let him be. There are plenty of us wise
ones who are altogether above these small
childishnesses, or who indulge them in other, and
perhaps less harmless forms. There are plenty
of us to represent the matter-of-fact interest.
Plenty given up to the accumulation of wealth,
and other sensible practical pursuits. If we
hold the art mystic but in light esteem, if we
believe not in our friend's astrological pretensions,
after all we need not go to him; yet let
us bear him no grudge nevertheless. For the
benefit of those who are differently constituted,
and who, like Mr. Lethwaite, take a certain
interest in matters supernatural, it is only right
that I should mention that our sage may still
be consulted even in these enlightened days,
and will construct a horoscope for the reader
to-morrow, on the most approved principles, if
the reader can only find him out.

Vampi is still the oracle of the poor in his
neighbourhood, and is still able to do a vast
deal of good among them. He is still gloriously
happy, so much so that he is obliged at times to
have recourse, as of old, to the scrubbing-brush
next his skin, to act as a kind of ballast. He
is still fat, and florid, and healthy, with a
countenance that it does you good to look on.
There is but one thing changed about him, and
that, after all, is connected entirely with his
business arrangements. Since the day when he
learned the fate of Diana Carrington, he has
ceased to keep poisons as part of his stock in
trade. Never will he sell poison again, be it
opium, or whatever else, to any human soul.

No, not even to that favoured friend and
client, Mr. Julius Lethwaite, if he were—which
is most unlikely—to make application for a
dose. This gentleman has by no means given
up the practice of consulting the oracle, as
interpreted by the gifted Cornelius, though
nothing will induce him to confess that he really
believes in the astrologer's powers. His visits,
however, to the observatory are as frequent as
of old, nor has even Jonathan Goodrich
anything to say against the philosopher since the
great day when he did such glorious service to
the cause of justice, and helped to save the life
of Gabrielle Penmore.

Mr. Lethwaite's principles remain much the
same as ever, and he still challenges mankind
to produce before him a single action done
with an entirely clean motive. "Love of approval,"
and "the desire to have a finger in the
pie," are, according to him, the great main-springs
to which most so-called good actions
are traceable. His own recent exertions in
behalf of his friends, the hero and heroine of
this tale, he has, in every case, traced back with
considerable skill to motives which are, to him,
entirely satisfactory in their unsatisfactoriness.
He still meets occasionally with instances of
conduct which it is difficult to reconcile with
his theory, and when, after a while, it came to
his knowledge what Gabrielle had done in soothing