perfect repose essential to its
success. They were to seclude themselves in the extensive apartments
occupied by Aylmer as a laboratory, and where, during his toilsome
youth, he had made discoveries in the elemental powers of Nature that
had roused the admiration of all the learned societies in Europe.
Seated calmly in this laboratory, the pale philosopher had investigated
the secrets of the highest cloud region and of the profoundest mines;
he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled and kept alive the
fires of the volcano; and had explained the mystery of fountains, and
how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and pure, and others
with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom of the earth.
Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the wonders of the
human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process by which Nature
assimilates all her precious influences from earth and air, and from
the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her masterpiece. The
latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside in unwilling
recognition of the truth--against which all seekers sooner or later
stumble--that our great creative Mother, while she amuses us with
apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful to
keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended openness, shows us
nothing but results. She permits us, indeed, to mar, but seldom to
mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to make. Now,
however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten investigations; not, of
course, with such hopes or wishes as first suggested them; but because
they involved much physiological truth and lay in the path of his
proposed scheme for the treatment of Georgiana.

As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory, Georgiana was cold
and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to
reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the
birthmark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a
strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.

"Aminadab! Aminadab!" shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the floor.

Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature,
but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was
grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been Aylmer's
underworker during his whole scientific career, and was admirably
fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness, and the