I will return in brief space." So speaking, she wrapped herself in her mantle, and saying to the old woman whom she passed in the outer room that she was going to evening prayer, she left the house.
Meanwhile her father had reached once more the laboratory, where he found the accomplices of his intended guilt.

"Has the sweet bird sipped ?" said Varney, with half a smile; while the astrologer put the same question with his eyes, but spoke not a word.
"She has not, nor she shall not from my hands," replied Foster; "would you have me do murder in my daughter's presence ?" "Wert thou not told, thou sullen and yet faint-hearted slave," answered Varney, with bitterness, "that no MURDER as thou callest it, with that staring look and stammering tone, is designed in the matter?
Wert thou not told that a brief illness, such as woman puts on in very wantonness, that she may wear her night-gear at noon, and lie on a settle when she should mind her domestic business, is all here aimed at?
Here is a learned man will swear it to thee by the key of the Castle of Wisdom." "I swear it," said Alasco, "that the elixir thou hast there in the flask will not prejudice life! I swear it by that immortal and indestructible quintessence of gold, which pervades every substance in nature, though its secret existence can be traced by him only to whom Trismegistus renders the key of the Cabala." "An oath of force," said Varney.

"Foster, thou wert worse than a pagan to disbelieve it.

Believe me, moreover, who swear by nothing but by my own word, that if you be not conformable, there is no hope, no, not a glimpse of hope, that this thy leasehold may be transmuted into a copyhold.

Thus, Alasco will leave your pewter artillery untransmigrated, and I, honest Anthony, will still have thee for my tenant." "I know not, gentlemen," said Foster, "where your designs tend to; but in one thing I am bound up,--that, fall back fall edge, I will have one in this place that may pray for me, and that one shall be my daughter.
I have lived ill, and the world has been too weighty with me; but she is as innocent as ever she was when on her mother's lap, and she, at least, shall have her portion in that happy City, whose walls are of pure gold, and the foundations garnished with all manner of precious stones." "Ay, Tony," said Varney, "that were a paradise to thy heart's content .-- Debate the matter with him, Doctor Alasco; I will be with you anon." So speaking, Varney arose, and taking the flask from the table, he left the room.
"I tell thee, my son," said Alasco to Foster, as soon as Varney had left them, "that whatever this bold and profligate railer may say of the mighty science, in which, by Heaven's blessing, I have advanced so far that I would not call the wisest of living artists my better or my teacher--I say, howsoever yonder reprobate may scoff at things too holy to be apprehended by men merely of carnal and evil thoughts, yet believe that the city beheld by St.John, in that bright vision of the Christian Apocalypse, that new Jerusalem, of which all Christian men hope to partake, sets forth typically the discovery of the GRAND SECRET, whereby the most precious and perfect of nature's works are elicited out of her basest and most crude productions; just as the light and gaudy butterfly, the most beautiful child of the summer's breeze, breaks forth from the dungeon of a sordid chrysalis." "Master Holdforth said nought of this exposition," said Foster doubtfully; "and moreover, Doctor Alasco, the Holy Writ says that the gold and precious stones of the Holy City are in no sort for those who work abomination, or who frame lies." "Well, my son," said the Doctor, "and what is your inference from thence ?" "That those," said Foster, "who distil poisons, and administer them in secrecy, can have no portion in those unspeakable riches." "You are to distinguish, my son," replied the alchemist, "betwixt that which is necessarily evil in its progress and in its end also, and that which, being evil, is, nevertheless, capable of working forth good.