‘Oh! do not kill me with such cold, cruel disdain. Only consent to follow me, and you will be convinced that you ought not to be united to one so utterly unworthy of you as Marian Hume.’ The marquis, moved by her tears and entreaties, at length consented to accompany her. She led him a considerable distance from the city to a subterranean grotto, where was a fire burning on a brazen altar. She threw a certain powder into the flame, and immediately they were transported through the air to an apartment at the summit of a lofty tower. At one end of this room was a vast mirror, and at the other a drawn curtain, behind which a most brilliant light was visible. ‘You are now,’ said Lady Ellrington, ‘in the sacred presence of one whose counsel, I am sure, you, my lord, will never slight.’ At this moment the curtain was removed, and the astonished marquis beheld Crashie, the divine and infallible, seated on his golden throne, and surrounded by those mysterious rays of light which ever emanate from him. ‘My son,’ said he, with an august smile, and in a voice of awful harmony, ‘fate and inexorable destiny have decreed that in the hour you are united to the maiden of your choice, the angel Azazel shall smite you both, and convey your disembodied souls over the swift-flowing and impassable river of death. Hearken to the counsels of wisdom, and do not, in the madness of self-will, destroy yourself and Marian Hume by refusing the offered hand of one who, from the moment of your birth, was doomed by the prophetic stars of heaven to be your partner and support through the dark, unexplored wilderness of future life.’ He ceased. The combat betwixt true love and duty raged for a few seconds in the marquis’s heart, and sent his life-blood in a tumult of agony and despair burning to his cheek and brow. At length duty prevailed, and, with a strong effort, he said in a firm, unfaltering voice: ‘Son of Wisdom! I will war no longer against the high decree of heaven, and here I swear by the eternal—’ The rash oath was checked in the moment of its utterance by some friendly spirit who whispered in his ear: ‘There is magic. Beware!’ At the same time Crashie’s venerable form faded away, and in its stead appeared the evil genius, Danhasch,[7] in all the naked hideousness of his real deformity. The demon soon vanished with a wild howl of rage, and the marquis found himself again in the grove with Lady Ellrington. 7 Danhasch, son of Schemhourasch, a genie rebellious to God (_Arabian Nights Entertainments_).—C. W. H. She implored him on her knees to forgive an attempt which love alone had dictated, but he turned from her with a smile of bitter contempt and disdain, and hastened to his father’s palace.