all its
hidden strings, and making them resound at its pleasure. I am helpless
to resist it, though it should drive me to my destruction! Can that
diabolical, sneering irony, with which the Professor received us at his
house, have been anything other than the expression of this hostile
principle? Was it with any other intention than that of getting his
hands washed of me for ever, that he fobbed us off with those
automatons of his?"

"'"You are very probably right," said Lewis; "for I have a strong
suspicion myself that, in some manner which is as yet an utter riddle
to me, the Professor does exercise some sort of power or influence over
your fate, or, I should rather say, over that mysterious psychical
relationship, or affinity, which exists between you and this lady. It
may be that, being mixed up in some way with this affinity, in his
character of an element hostile to it, he strengthens it by the very
fact that he opposes it: and it may also be that that which renders you
so extremely unacceptable to him is the circumstance that your presence
awakens, and sets into lively movement all the strings and chords of
this mutually sympathetic condition, and this contrary to his desire,
and, very probably, in opposition to some conventional family
arrangement."

"'Our friends determined to leave no stone unturned in their efforts to
make a closer approach to the Professor, with the hope that they might
succeed, sooner or later, in clearing up this mystery which so affected
Ferdinand's destiny and fate, and they were to have paid him a visit on
the following morning as a preliminary step. However, a letter, which
Ferdinand unexpectedly received from his father, summoned him to B----;
it was impossible for him to permit himself the smallest delay, and in
a few hours he was off, as fast as post-horses could convey him,
assuring Lewis, as he started, that nothing should prevent his return
in a fortnight, at the very furthest.

"'It struck Lewis as a singular circumstance that, soon after
Ferdinand's departure, the same old gentleman who had at first spoken
of the Professor's connection with "the Talking Turk," took an
opportunity of enlarging to him on the fact that X----'s mechanical
inventions were simply the result of an extreme enthusiasm for
mechanical pursuits, and of deep and searching investigations in
natural science; he also more particularly lauded the Professor's
wonderful discoveries in music, which, he said, h