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 under-worker during his whole scientific career, and was
admirably fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness,
and the skill with which, while incapable of comprehending a single
principle, he executed all the details of his master's experiments.
With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the
indescribable earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent
man's physical nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale,
intellectual face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual element.

"Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab," said Aylmer, "and burn
a pastil."

"Yes, master," answered Aminadab, looking intently at the lifeless
form of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself, "If she were my
wife, I'd never part with that birthmark."