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 recognize 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 varying
aspects of external nature,--innocently joyous, or unaccountably
sad,--when, I say, such a being comes across your experience, inform me;
and the chances are that the true Pythoness is found."

I had listened with vague terror, and with more than one exclamation of
amazement, to descriptions which brought Lilian Ashleigh before me; and I
now sat mute, bewildered, breathless, gazing upon Margrave, and rejoicing
that, at least, Lilian he had never seen.

He returned my own gaze steadily, searchingly, and then, breaking
into a slight laugh, resumed:--

"You call my word 'Pythoness' affected. I know of no better. My
recollections of classic anecdote and history are confused and dim; but
somewhere I have read or heard that the priests of Delphi were accustomed
to travel chiefly into Thrace or Thessaly, in search of the virgins who
might fitly administer their oracles, and that the oracles gradually
ceased in repute as the priests became unable to discover the
organization requisite in the priestesses, and supplied by craft and