omehow to me that his
unknown nature was a systematic blasphemy against it all. If fiend he was,
he was yet something higher than the garrulous, and withal feeble, demon of
Goethe. He assumed the limbs and features of our mortal nature. He shrouded
his own, and was a profoundly reticent Mephistopheles. Gentle he had been
to me--kindly he had nearly always spoken; but it seemed like the mild talk
of one of those goblins of the desert, whom Asiatic superstition tells of,
who appear in friendly shapes to stragglers from the caravan, beckon to
them from afar, call them by their names, and lead them where they are
found no more. Was, then, all his kindness but a phosphoric radiance
covering something colder and more awful than the grave?

'It is very noble of you, Maud--it is angelic; your sympathy with a ruined
and despairing old man. But I fear you will recoil. I tell you frankly that
less than twenty thousand pounds will not extricate me from the quag of
ruin in which I am entangled--lost!'

'Recoil! Far from it. I'll do it. There must be some way.'

'Enough, my fair young protectress--celestial enthusiast, enough. Though
you do not, yet I recoil. I could not bring myself to accept this
sacrifice. What signifies, even to me, my extrication? I lie a mangled
wretch, with fifty mortal wounds on my crown; what avails the healing of
one wound, when there are so many beyond all cure? Better to let me perish
where I fall; and reserve your money for the worthier objects whom,
perhaps, hereafter may avail to save.'

'But I _will_ do this. I must. I cannot see you suffer with the power in my
hands unemployed to help you,' I exclaimed.

'Enough, dear Maud; the will is here--enough: there is balm in your
compassion and good-will. Leave me, ministering angel; for the present I
cannot. If you _will_, we can talk of it again. Good-night.'

And so we parted.

The attorney from Feltram, I afterwards heard, was with him nearly all that
night, trying in vain to devise by their joint ingenuity any means by which
I might tie myself up. But there were none. I could not bind myself.

I was myself full of the hope of helping him. What was this sum to me,
great as it seemed? Truly nothing. I could have spared it, and never felt
the loss.

I took up a large quarto with coloured prints, one of the few books I had
brought with me from dear old Knowl. Too much excited to hope for sleep in
bed, I opened it, and turned over the leaves, my mind