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. 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.
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