success of his experiment, and was confident, as he was, that he held in
his control the means of unlimited life; neither was he sure that she
loved him,--loved him well enough to undertake with him the long march
that he propounded to her, making a union an affair of so vastly more
importance than it is in the brief lifetime of other mortals. But he
determined to let her drink the invaluable draught along with him, and to
trust to the long future, and the better opportunities that time would
give him, and his outliving all rivals, and the loneliness which an
undying life would throw around her, without him, as the pledges of his
success.

* * * * *

And now the happy day had come for the celebration of Robert Hagburn's
marriage with pretty Rose Garfield, the brave with the fair; and, as
usual, the ceremony was to take place in the evening, and at the house of
the bride; and preparations were made accordingly: the wedding-cake, which
the bride's own fair hands had mingled with her tender hopes, and seasoned
it with maiden fears, so that its composition was as much ethereal as
sensual; and the neighbors and friends were invited, and came with their
best wishes and good-will. For Rose shared not at all the distrust, the
suspicion, or whatever it was, that had waited on the true branch of
Septimius's family, in one shape or another, ever since the memory of man;
and all--except, it might be, some disappointed damsels who had hoped to
win Robert Hagburn for themselves--rejoiced at the approaching union of
this fit couple, and wished them happiness.

Septimius, too, accorded his gracious consent to the union, and while he
thought within himself that such a brief union was not worth the trouble
and feeling which his sister and her lover wasted on it, still he wished