Is it age, is it youth, that thus shocks all my sense, in my solemn
completeness of man? Perhaps, in great capitals, young men of pleasure
will answer, "It is youth; and we think what he says!" Young friends, I
do not believe you.




CHAPTER LXXX.

Along the grass-track I saw now, under the moon, just risen, a strange
procession, never seen before in Australian pastures. It moved on,
noiselessly but quickly. We descended the hillock, and met it on the
way,--a sable litter, borne by four men, in unfamiliar Eastern garments;
two other servitors, more bravely dressed, with yataghans and
silver-hilted pistols in their belts, preceded this sombre equipage.
Perhaps Margrave divined the disdainful thought that passed through my
mind, vaguely and half-unconsciously; for he said, with a hollow, bitter
laugh that had replaced the lively peal of his once melodious mirth,--

"A little leisure and a little gold, and your raw colonist, too, will have
the tastes of a pacha."

I made no answer. I had ceased to care who and what was my tempter. To
me his whole being was resolved into one problem: Had he a secret by which
death could be turned from Lilian?

But now, as the litter halted, from the long dark shadow which it cast
upon the turf the figure of a woman emerged and stood before us. The
outlines of her shape were lost in the loose folds of a black mantle, and