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.
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