Margrave did not heed my reply. His face was overcast, gloomy, troubled.

"That the vital principle is a gas," said he, abruptly, "I am fully
convinced. Can that gas be the one which combines caloric with oxygen?"

"Phosoxygen? Sir Humphrey Davy demonstrates that gas not to be, as
Lavoisier supposed, caloric, but light, combined with oxygen; and he
suggests, not indeed that it is the vital principle itself, but the
pabulum of life to organic beings." [1]

"Does he?" said Margrave, his, face clearing up. "Possibly, possibly,
then, here we approach the great secret of secrets. Look you, Allen
Fenwick: I promise to secure to you unfailing security from all the
jealous fears that now torture your heart; if you care for that fame which
to me is not worth the scent of a flower, the balm of a breeze, I will
impart to you a knowledge which, in the hands of ambition, would dwarf
into commonplace the boasted wonders of recognized science. I will do
all this, if, in return, but for one month you will give yourself up to my
guidance in whatever experiments I ask, no matter how wild they may seem
to you."

"My dear Margrave, I reject your bribes as I would reject the moon and the
stars which a child might offer to me in exchange for a toy; but I may
give the child its toy for nothing, and I may test your experiments for
nothing some day when I have leisure."

I did not hear Margrave's answer, for at that moment my servant entered
with letters. Lilian's hand! Tremblingly, breathlessly, I broke the
seal. Such a loving, bright, happy letter; so sweet in its gentle chiding
of my wrongful fears! It was implied rather than said that Ashleigh