h
occasions, she would turn away and leave me, but she soon came back;
that gentle heart could not bear one unkindlier shade between itself
and what it loved. It was agreed that our engagement should be, for the
present, confided only to Mrs. Poyntz. When Mrs. Ashleigh and Lilian
returned, which would be in a few weeks at furthest, it should be
proclaimed; and our marriage could take place in the autumn, when I
should be most free for a brief holiday from professional toils.

So we parted-as lovers part. I felt none of those jealous fears
which, before we were affianced, had made me tremble at the thought of
separation, and had conjured up irresistible rivals. But it was with a
settled, heavy gloom that I saw her depart. From earth was gone a glory;
from life a blessing.

CHAPTER XX.

During the busy years of my professional career, I had snatched leisure
for some professional treatises, which had made more or less sensation,
and one of them, entitled "The Vital Principle; its Waste and Supply,"
had gained a wide circulation among the general public. This last
treatise contained the results of certain experiments, then new in
chemistry, which were adduced in support of a theory I entertained as to
the re-invigoration of the human system by principles similar to
those which Liebig has applied to the replenishment of an exhausted
soil,--namely, the giving back to the frame those essentials to its
nutrition, which it has lost by the action or accident of time; or
supplying that special pabulum or energy in which the individual
organism is constitutionally deficient; and neutralizing or
counterbalancing that in which it super-abounds,--a theory upon which
some eminent physicians have more recently improved with signal success.
But on these essays, slight and suggestive, rather than dogmatic, I set
no value. I had been for the last two years engaged on a work of much
wider range, endeared to me by a far bolder ambition,--a work upon which
I fondly hoped to found an enduring reputation as a severe and
original physiologist. It was an Inquiry into Organic Life, similar in
comprehensiveness of survey to that by which the illustrious Muller, of
Berlin, has enriched the science of our age; however inferior, alas! to
that august combination of thought and learning in the judgment which
checks presumption, and the genius which adorns speculation. But at that
day I was carried away by the ardour of composition, and I admire