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 a
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."