The skeleton frame of the witch shook beneath strong convulsions.

Arbaces gazed upon her with a curious though contemptuous eye.

‘And this foul thing has yet human emotions!’ thought he; ’still she cowers over the ashes of the same fire that consumes Arbaces!—­Such are we all!  Mystic is the tie of those mortal passions that unite the greatest and the least.’

He did not reply till she had somewhat recovered herself, and now sat rocking to and fro in her seat, with glassy eyes fixed on the opposite flame, and large tears rolling down her livid cheeks.

‘A grievous tale is thine, in truth,’ said Arbaces.  ’But these emotions are fit only for our youth—­age should harden our hearts to all things but ourselves; as every year adds a scale to the shell-fish, so should each year wall and incrust the heart.  Think of those frenzies no more!  And now, listen to me again!  By the revenge that was dear to thee, I command thee to obey me! it is for vengeance that I seek thee!  This youth whom I would sweep from my path has crossed me, despite my spells:—­this thing of purple and broidery, of smiles and glances, soulless and mindless, with no charm but that of beauty—­accursed be it!—­this insect—­this Glaucus—­I tell thee, by Orcus and by Nemesis, he must die.’

And working himself up at every word, the Egyptian, forgetful of his debility—­of his strange companion—­of everything but his own vindictive rage, strode, with large and rapid steps, the gloomy cavern.

‘Glaucus! saidst thou, mighty master!’ said the witch, abruptly; and her dim eye glared at the name with all that fierce resentment at the memory of small affronts so common amongst the solitary and the shunned.

’Ay, so he is called; but what matters the name?  Let it not be heard as that of a living man three days from this date!’

‘Hear me!’ said the witch, breaking from a short reverie into which she was plunged after this last sentence of the Egyptian.  ’Hear me!  I am thy thing and thy slave! spare me!  If I give to the maiden thou speakest of that which would destroy the life of Glaucus, I shall be surely detected—­the dead ever find avengers.  Nay, dread man! if thy visit to me be tracked, if thy hatred to Glaucus be known, thou mayest have need of thy archest magic to protect thyself!’

‘Ha!’ said Arbaces, stopping suddenly short; and as a proof of that blindness with which passion darkens the eyes even of the most acute, this was the first time when the risk that he himself ran by this method of vengeance had occurred to a mind ordinarily wary and circumspect.

‘But,’ continued the witch, ’if instead of that which shall arrest the heart, I give that which shall sear and blast the brain—­which shall make him who quaffs it unfit for the uses and career of life—­an abject, raving, benighted thing—­smiting sense to drivelling youth to dotage—­will not thy vengeance be equally sated—­thy object equally attained?’