s soon as he could come to speech with him; but yet, in
spite of that assurance which he gave himself, he returned to the
mystery again and again, and beset and bewildered himself with
questions: Why was Julius estranged from his father? What was the secret
of the old man's life which had left such an awful impress on his face?
And why was he nightly haunting the busiest pavements of London, in the
crowd, but not of it, urged on as by some desire or agony?

He went to bed, but not to sleep. In the quiet and the darkness his
imagination ranged without constraint over the whole field of his
questionings. He went back upon Dr Rippon's story of the Spanish
marquis, and fixed on the mention of his occult studies. He saw him, in
fancy, without wife or son, cut off from the position and activities in
his native country which his proper rank would have given him, sequester
himself from society altogether, and give himself up to the study of
those Arabian sages and alchemists in whom he had delighted when he was
a young man. He saw him shun the daylight, and sleep its hours away, and
then by night abandon himself like another Cagliostro to strange
experiments with alembic and crucible, breathing acrid and poisonous
vapours, seeking to extort from Nature her yet undiscovered
secrets,--the Philosophers Stone, and the Elixir of Life. He saw him
turn for a little from his strange and deadly experiments, and venture
forth to show his blanched and worn face among the throngs of men; but
even there he still pursued his anxious quest of life in the midst of
death. He saw him wander up and down, in and out, among the evening
crowd, delighting in contact with such of his fellow-creatures as had
health and youth, and seeking, seeking--he knew not what. From this
phantasmagoria he dozed off into the dark plains of sleep; but even
there the terribly blanched and emaciated face was with him, bending
wistful worn eyes upon him and melting him to pity. And still again the
vision of the streets would arise about the face, and the sleeper would
be aware of the man to whom the face belonged walking quickly and
sinuously, seeking and enjoying contact with the throng, and strangely
causing many to resent his touch as if they had been pricked or stung,
and yet urged onward in some further quest,--an anxious quest it
sometimes resolved itself into for Julius, who ever evaded him.

Thus his brain laboured through the dead hours of the night, viewing an