you would voluntarily lend yourself to my will. Meanwhile, I had found in
her the light of a loftier knowledge than that of your science; through
that knowledge, duly heeded and cultivated, I hoped to divine what I
cannot of myself discover. Therefore I deepened over her mind the spells
I command; therefore I have drawn her hither as the loadstone draws the
steel, and therefore I would have borne her with me to the shores to which
I was about this night to sail. I had cast the inmates of the house and
all around it into slumber, in order that none might witness her
departure; had I not done so, I should have summoned others to my aid, in
spite of your threat."

"And would Lilian Ashleigh have passively accompanied you, to her own
irretrievable disgrace?"

"She could not have helped it; she would have been unconscious of her
acts; she was, and is, in a trance; nor, had she gone with me, would she
have waked from that state while she lived; that would not have been
long."

"Wretch! and for what object of unhallowed curiosity do you exert an
influence which withers away the life of its victim?"

"Not curiosity, but the instinct of self-preservation. I count on no life
beyond the grave. I would defy the grave, and live on."

"And was it to learn, through some ghastly agencies, the secret of
renewing existence, that you lured me by the shadow of your own image on
the night when we met last?"

The voice of Margrave here became very faint as he answered me, and his