The foam gathered to his lips; his limbs became fearfully convulsed.
“One question more: where is Lilian at this moment? Answer that question, and I depart.”
He raised his head, made a visible effort to rally his strength, and gasped out,—
“Yonder. Pass through the open space up the cliff, beside a thorn-tree; you will find her there, where she halted when the wand dropped from my hand. But—but—beware! Ha! you will serve me yet, and through her! They said so that night, though you heard them not. They said it!” Here his face became death-like; he pressed his hand on his heart, and shrieked out, “Away! away! or you are my murderer!”
I retreated to the other end of the room, turning the wand from him, and when I gained the door, looked back; his convulsions had ceased, but he seemed locked in a profound swoon.
I left the room,—the house,—paused by Waby; he was still sleeping. “Awake!” I said, and touched him with the wand. He started up at once, rubbed his eyes, began stammering out excuses. I checked them, and bade him follow me. I took the way up the open ground towards which Margrave had pointed the wand, and there, motionless, beside a gnarled fantastic thorn-tree, stood Lilian. Her arms were folded across her breast; her face, seen by the moonlight, looked so innocent and so infantine, that I needed no other evidence to tell me how unconscious she was of the peril to which her steps had been drawn. I took her gently by the hand. “Come with me,” I said in a whisper, and she obeyed me silently, and with a placid smile.
Rough though the way, she seemed unconscious of fatigue. I placed her arm in mine, but she did not lean on it. We got back to the town. I obtained there an old chaise and a pair of horses. At morning Lilian was under her mother’s roof. About the noon of that day fever seized her; she became rapidly worse, and, to all appearance, in imminent danger. Delirium set in; I watched beside her night and day, supported by an inward conviction of her recovery, but tortured by the sight of her sufferings. On the third day a change for the better became visible; her sleep was calm, her breathing regular.
Shortly afterwards she woke out of danger. Her eyes fell at once on me, with all their old ineffable tender sweetness.
“Oh, Allen, beloved, have I not been very ill? But I am almost well now. Do not weep; I shall live for you,—for your sake.” And she bent forward, drawing my hand from my streaming eyes, and kissed me with a child’s guileless kiss on my burning forehead.
(1) And yet, even if we entirely omit the consideration of the soul, that immaterial and immortal principle which is for a time united to his body, and view him only in his merely animal character, man is still the most excellent of animals.—Dr. Kidd, On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man (Sect. iii. p. 18).