That fearlessly frank confession silenced him. He happened to be sitting opposite to the glass, so that he could see his face. The poor wretch abruptly moved his chair, so as to turn his back on it.

I looked at Nugent, and surprised him trying to catch his brother's eye. Prompted by him, as I could now no longer doubt, Oscar had laid his finger on a certain domestic difficulty which I had had in my mind, from the moment when the question of the operation had been first agitated among us.

(The marriage of Oscar and Lucilla—it is here necessary to explain—had encountered another obstacle, and undergone a new delay, in consequence of the dangerous illness of Lucilla's aunt. Miss Batchford, formally invited to the ceremony as a matter of course, had most considerately sent a message begging that the marriage might not be deferred on her account. Lucilla, however, had refused to allow her wedding to be celebrated, while the woman who had been a second mother to her, lay at the point of death. The rector having an eye to rich Miss Batchford's money—not for himself (Miss B. detested him), but for Lucilla—had supported his daughter's decision; and Oscar had been compelled to submit. These domestic events had taken place about three weeks since; and we were now in receipt of news which not only assured us of the old lady's recovery, but informed us also that she would be well enough to make one of the wedding party in a fortnight's time. The bride's dress was in the house; the bride's father was ready to officiate—and here, like a fatality, was the question of the operation unexpectedly starting up, and threatening another delay yet, for a period which could not possibly be shorter than a period of three months! Add to this, if you please, a new element of embarrassment as follows. Supposing Lucilla to persist in her resolution, and Oscar to persist in concealing from her the personal change in him produced by the medical treatment of the fits, what would happen? Nothing less than this. Lucilla, if the operation succeeded, would find out for herself—before instead of after her marriage—the deception that had been practiced on her. And how she might resent that deception, thus discovered, the cleverest person among us could not pretend to foresee. There was our situation, as we sat in domestic parliament assembled, when the surgeons had left us!)

Finding it impossible to attract his brother's attention, Nugent had no alternative but to interfere actively for the first time.

"Let me suggest, Lucilla," he said, "that it is your duty to look at the other side of the question, before you make up your mind. In the first place, it is surely hard on Oscar to postpone the wedding-day again. In the second place, clever as he is, Herr Grosse is not infallible. It is just possible that the operation may fail, and that you may find you have put off your marriage for three months, to no purpose. Do think of it! If you defer the operation on your eyes till after your marriage, you conciliate all interests, and you only delay by a month or so the time when you may see."

Lucilla impatiently shook her head.

"If you were blind," she answered, "you would not willingly delay by a single hour the time when you might see. You ask me to think of it. I ask you to think of the years I have lost. I ask you to think of the exquisite happiness I shall feel, when Oscar and I are standing at the altar, if I can see the husband to whom I am giving myself for life! Put it off for a month? You might as well ask me to die for a month. It is like death to be sitting here blind, and to know that a man is within a few hours' reach of me who can give me my sight! I tell you all plainly, if you go on opposing me in this, I don't answer for myself. If Herr Grosse is not recalled to Dimchurch before the end of the week—I am my own mistress; I will go to him in London!"

Both the brothers looked at me.

"Have you nothing to say, Madame Pratolungo?" asked Nugent.

Oscar was too painfully agitated to speak. He softly crossed to my chair; and, kneeling by me, put my hand entreatingly to his lips.

You may consider me a heartless woman if you will. I remained entirely unmoved even by this. Lucilla's interests and my interests, you will observe, were now one. I had resolved, from the first, that she should not be married in ignorance of which was the man who was disfigured by the blue face. If she took the course which would enable her to make that discovery for herself, at the right time, she would spare me the performance of a very painful and ungracious duty—and she would marry, as I was determined she should marry, with a full knowledge of the truth. In this position of affairs, it was no business of mine to join the twin-brothers in trying to make her alter her resolution. On the contrary, it was my business to confirm her in it.

"I can't see that I have any right to interfere," I said. "In Lucilla's place—after one and twenty years of blindness—I too should sacrifice every other consideration to the consideration of recovering my sight."

Oscar instantly rose, offended with me, and walked away to the window. Lucilla's face brightened gratefully. "Ah!" she said, "you understand me!" Nugent, in his turn, left his chair. He had confidently calculated, in his brother's interests, on Lucilla's marriage preceding the recovery of Lucilla's sight. That calculation was completely baffled. The marriage would now depend on the state of Lucilla's feelings, after she had penetrated the truth for herself. I saw Nugent's face darken, as he walked to the door.

"Madame Pratolungo," he said, "you may, one day, regret the course that you have just taken. Do as you please, Lucilla—I have no more to say."

He left the room, with a quiet submission to circumstances which became him admirably. Now, as always, it was impossible not to compare him advantageously with his vacillating brother. Oscar turned round at the window, apparently with the idea of following Nugent out. At the first step he checked himself. There was a last effort still left to make. Reverend Finch's "moral weight" had not been thrown into the scale yet.

"There is one thing more, Lucilla," he said, "which you ought to know before you decide. I have seen your father. He desires me to tell you that he is strongly opposed to the experiment which you are determined to try."

Lucilla sighed wearily. "It is not the first time that I find my father failing to sympathize with me," she said. "I am distressed—but not surprised. It is you who surprise me!" she added, suddenly raising her voice. "You, who love me, are not one with me, when I am standing on the brink of a new life. Good Heavens! are my interests not your interests in this? Is it not worth your while to wait till I can look at you when I vow before God to love, honor, and obey you? Do you understand him?" she asked, appealing abruptly to me. "Why does he try to start difficulties? why is he not as eager about it as I am?"

I turned to Oscar. Now was the time for him to fall at her feet and own it! Here was the golden opportunity that might never come again. I signed to him impatiently to take it. He tried to take it—let me do him the justice now, which I failed to do him at the time—he tried to take it. He advanced towards her; he struggled with himself; he said, "There is a motive for my conduct, Lucilla——" and stopped. His breath failed him; he struggled again; he forced out a word or two more: "A motive," he went on, "which I have been afraid to confess——" he paused again, with the perspiration pouring over his livid face.

Lucilla's patience failed her. "What is your motive?" she asked sharply.

The tone in which she spoke broke down his last reserves of resolution. He turned his head suddenly so as not to see her. At the final moment—miserable, miserable man!—at the final moment, he took refuge in an excuse.

"I don't believe in Herr Grosse," he said faintly, "as you believe in him."

Lucilla rose, bitterly disappointed, and opened the door that led into her own room.

"If it had been you who were blind," she answered, "your belief would have been my belief, and your hope my hope. It seems I have expected too much from you. Live and learn! live and learn!"

She went into her room, and closed the door on us. I could bear it no longer. I got up, with the firm resolution in me to follow her, and say the words which he had failed to say for himself. My hand was on the door, when I was suddenly pulled back from it by Oscar. I turned, and faced him in silence.

"No!" he said, with his eyes fixed on mine, and his hand still on my arm. "If I don't tell her, nobody shall tell her for me."

"She shall be deceived no longer—she must, and shall, hear it," I answered. "Let me go!"

"You have given me your promise to wait for my leave before you open your lips. I forbid you to open your lips."

I snapped the fingers of my hand that was free, in his face. "That for my promise!" I said. "Your contemptible weakness is putting her happiness in peril as well as yours." I turned my head towards the door, and called to her. "Lucilla!"

His hand closed fast on my arm. Some lurking devil in him that I had never seen yet, leapt up and looked at me out of his eyes.

"Tell her," he whispered savagely between his teeth; "and I will contradict you to your face! If you are desperate, I am desperate too. I don't care what meanness I am guilty of! I will deny it on my honor; I will deny it on my oath. You heard what she said about you at Browndown. She will believe me before you."

Lucilla opened her door, and stood waiting on the threshold.

"What is it?" she asked quietly.

A moment's glance at Oscar warned me that he would do what he had threatened, if I persisted in my resolution. The desperation of a weak man is, of all desperations, the most unscrupulous and the most unmanageable—when it is once roused. Angry as I was, I shrank from degrading him, as I must now have degraded him, if I matched my obstinacy against his. In mercy to both of them, I gave way.

"I may be going out, my dear, before it gets dark," I said to Lucilla. "Can I do anything for you in the village?"

"Yes," she said, "if you will wait a little, you can take a letter for me to the post."

She went back into her room, and closed the door.

I neither looked at Oscar, nor spoke to him, when we were alone again. He was the first who broke the silence.

"You have remembered your promise to me," he said. "You have done well."

"I have nothing more to say to you," I answered. "I shall go to my own room."

His eyes followed me uneasily as I walked to the door.

"I shall speak to her," he muttered doggedly, "at my own time."

A wise woman would not have allowed him to irritate her into saying another word. Alas! I am not a wise woman—that is to say, not always.

"Your own time?" I repeated with the whole force of my contempt. "If you don't own the truth to her before the German surgeon comes back, your time will have gone by for ever. He has told us in the plainest terms—when once the operation is performed, nothing must be said to agitate or distress her, for months afterwards. The preservation of her tranquillity is the condition of the recovery of her sight. You will soon have an excuse for your silence, Mr. Oscar Dubourg!"

The tone in which I said those last words stung him to some purpose.

"Spare your sneers, you heartless Frenchwoman!" he broke out angrily. "I don't care how I stand in your estimation. Lucilla loves me. Nugent feels for me."

My vile temper instantly hit on the most merciless answer that I could make to him in return.

"Ah, poor Lucilla!" I said. "What a much happier prospect hers might have been! What a thousand pities it is that she is not going to marry your brother, instead of marrying you!"

He winced under that reply, as if I had cut him with a knife. His head dropped on his breast. He started back from me like a beaten dog—and suddenly and silently left the room.

I had not been a minute by myself, before my anger cooled. I tried to keep it hot; I tried to remember that he had aspersed my nation in calling me a "heartless Frenchwoman." No! it was not to be done. In spite of myself, I repented what I had said to him.

In a moment more, I was out on the stairs to try if I could overtake him.

I was too late. I heard the garden-gate bang, before I was out of the house. Twice I approached the gate to follow him. And twice I drew back, in the fear of making bad worse. It ended in my returning to the sitting-room, very seriously dissatisfied with myself.

The first welcome interruption to my solitude came—not from Lucilla—but from the old nurse. Zillah appeared with a letter for me: left that moment at the rectory by the servant from Browndown. The direction was in Oscar's handwriting. I opened the envelope, and read these words:—

"MADAME PRATOLUNGO,—YOU have distressed and pained me more than I can say. There are faults, and serious ones, on my side, I know. I heartily beg your pardon for anything that I may have said or done to offend you. I cannot submit to your hard verdict on me. If you knew how I adore Lucilla, you would make allowances for me—you would understand me better than you do. I cannot get your last cruel words out of my ears. I cannot meet you again without some explanation of them. You stabbed me to the heart, when you said to me this evening that it would be a happier prospect for Lucilla if she had been going to marry my brother instead of marrying me. I hope you did not really mean that? Will you please write and tell me whether you did or not?

"OSCAR."

Write and tell him? It was absurd enough—when we were within a few minutes' walk of each other—that Oscar should prefer the cold formality of a letter, to the friendly ease of a personal interview. Why could he not have called, and spoken to me? We should have made it up together far more comfortably in that way—and in half the time. At any rate, I determined to go to Browndown, and be good friends again, viva-voce, with this poor, weak, well-meaning, ill-judging boy. Was it not monstrous to have attached serious meaning to what Oscar had said when he was in a panic of nervous terror! His tone of writing so keenly distressed me that I resented his letter on that very account. It was one of the chilly evenings of an English June. A small fire was burning in the grate. I crumpled up the letter, and threw it, as I supposed, into the fire. (After-events showed that I only threw it into a corner of the fender instead.) Then, I put on my hat, without stopping to think of Lucilla, or of what she was writing for the post, and ran off to Browndown.

Where do you think I found him? Locked up in his own room! His insane shyness—it was really nothing less—made him shrink from that very personal explanation which (with such a temperament as mine) was the only possible explanation under the circumstances. I had to threaten him with forcing his door, before I could get him to show himself, and take my hand.

Once face to face with him, I soon set things right. I really believe he had been half mad with his own self-imposed troubles, when he had declared he would give me the lie at the door of Lucilla's room.

It is needless to dwell on what took place between us. I shall only say here that I had serious reason, at a later time—as you will soon see—to regret not having humoured Oscar's request that I should reconcile myself to him by writing, instead of by word of mouth. If I had only placed on record, in pen and ink, what I actually said in the way of making atonement to him, I might have spared some suffering to myself and to others. As it was, the only proof that I had absolved myself in his estimation consisted in his cordially shaking hands with me at the door, when I left him.

"Did you meet Nugent?" he asked, as he walked with me across the enclosure in front of the house.

I had gone to Browndown by a short cut at the back of the garden, instead of going through the village. Having mentioned this, I asked if Nugent had returned to the rectory.

"He went back to see you," said Oscar.

"Why?"

"Only his usual kindness. He takes your views of things. He laughed when he heard I had sent a letter to you, and he ran off (dear fellow!) to see you on my behalf. You must have met him, if you had come here by the village."

On getting back to the rectory, I questioned Zillah. Nugent, in my absence, had run up into the sitting-room; had waited there a few minutes alone, on the chance of my return; had got tired of waiting, and had gone away again. I inquired about Lucilla next. A few minutes after Nugent had gone, she had left her room, and she too had asked for me. Hearing that I was not to be found in the house, she had given Zillah a letter to post—and had then returned to her bed-chamber.

I happened to be standing by the hearth, looking into the dying fire, while the nurse was speaking. Not a vestige of Oscar's letter to me (as I now well remember) was to be seen. In my position, the plain conclusion was that I had really done what I supposed myself to have done—that is to say, thrown the letter into the flames.

Entering Lucilla's room, soon afterwards, to make my apologies for having forgotten to wait and take her letter to the post, I found her, weary enough after the events of the day, getting ready for bed.

"I don't wonder at your being tired of waiting for me," she said. "Writing is long, long work for me. But this was a letter which I felt bound to write myself, if I could. Can you guess who I am corresponding with? It is done, my dear! I have written to Herr Grosse!"

"Already!"

"What is there to wait for? What is there left to determine on? I have told Herr Grosse that our family consultation is over, and that I am entirely at his disposal for any length of time he may think right. And I warn him, if he attempts to put it off, that he will be only forcing on me the inconvenience of going to him in London. I have expressed that part of my letter strongly—I can tell you! He will get it to-morrow, by the afternoon post. And the next day—if he is a man of his word—he will be here."

"Oh, Lucilla! not to operate on your eyes?"

"Yes—to operate on my eyes!"



CHAPTER THE THIRTY-THIRD

The Day Between

THE interval-day before the second appearance of Herr Grosse, and the experiment on Lucilla's sight that was to follow it, was marked by two incidents which ought to be noticed in this place.

The first incident was the arrival, early in the morning, of another letter addressed to me privately by Oscar Dubourg. Like many other shy people, he had a perfect mania, where any embarrassing circumstances were concerned, for explaining himself, with difficulty, by means of his pen, in preference to explaining himself, with ease, by means of his tongue.

Oscar's present communication informed me that he had left us for London by the first morning train, and that his object in taking this sudden journey was—to state his present position towards Lucilla to a gentleman especially conversant with the peculiarities of blind people. In plain words, he had resolved on applying to Mr. Sebright for advice.

"I like Mr. Sebright" (Oscar wrote) "as cordially as I detest Herr Grosse. The short conversation I had with him has left me with the pleasantest impression of his delicacy and his kindness. If I freely reveal to this skillful surgeon the sad situation in which I am placed, I believe his experience will throw an entirely new light on the present state of Lucilla's mind, and on the changes which we may expect to see produced in her, if she really does recover her sight. The result may be of incalculable benefit in teaching me how I may own the truth, most harmlessly to her, as well as to myself. Pray don't suppose I undervalue your advice. I only want to be doubly fortified, before I risk my confession, by the advice of a scientific man."

All this I took to mean, in plain English, that vacillating Oscar wanted to quiet his conscience by gaining time, and that his absurd idea of consulting Mr. Sebright was nothing less than a new and plausible excuse for putting off the evil day. His letter ended by pledging me to secrecy, and by entreating me so to manage matters as to grant him a private interview on his return to Dimchurch by the evening train.

I confess I felt some curiosity as to what would come of the proposed consultation between unready Oscar and precise Mr. Sebright—and I accordingly arranged to take my walk alone, towards eight o'clock that evening, on the road that led to the distant railway station.



The second incident of the day may be described as a confidential conversation between Lucilla and myself, on the subject which now equally absorbed us both—the momentous subject of her restoration to the blessing of sight.

She joined me at the breakfast-table with her ready distrust newly excited, poor thing, by Oscar. He had accounted to her for his journey to London by putting forward the commonplace excuse of "business." She instantly suspected (knowing how he felt about it) that he was secretly bent on interfering with the performance of the operation by Herr Grosse. I contrived to compose the anxiety thus aroused in her mind, by informing her, on Oscar's own authority, that he personally disliked and distrusted the German oculist. "Make your mind easy," I said. "I answer for his not venturing near Herr Grosse."

A long silence between us followed those words. When Lucilla next referred to Oscar in connection with the coming operation, the depressed state of her spirits seemed to have quite altered her view of her own prospects. She, of all the people in the world, now spoke in disparagement of the blessing conferred on the blind by the recovery of their sight!

"Do you know one thing?" she said. "If I had not been going to be married to Oscar, I doubt if I should have cared to put any oculist, native or foreign, to the trouble of coming to Dimchurch."

"I don't think I understand you," I answered. "You cannot surely mean to say that you would not have been glad, under any circumstances, to recover your sight?"

"That is just what I do mean to say."

"What! you, who have written to Grosse to hurry the operation, don't care to see?"

"I only care to see Oscar. And, what is more, I only care to see him because I am in love with him. But for that, I really don't feel as if it would give me any particular pleasure to use my eyes. I have been blind so long, I have learnt to do without them."

"And yet, you looked perfectly entranced when Nugent first set you doubting whether you were blind for life?"

"Nugent took me by surprise," she answered; "Nugent startled me out of my senses. I have had time to think since; I am not carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment now. You people who can see attach such an absurd importance to your eyes! I set my touch, my dear, against your eyes, as much the most trustworthy, and much the most intelligent sense of the two. If Oscar was not, as I have said, the uppermost feeling with me, shall I tell you what I should have infinitely preferred to recovering my sight—supposing it could have been done?" She shook her head with a comic resignation to circumstances. "Unfortunately, it can't be done!"

"What can't be done?"

She suddenly held out both her arms over the breakfast-table.

"The stretching out of these to an enormous and unheard-of length. That is what I should have liked!" she answered. "I could find out better what was going on at a distance with my hands, than you could with your eyes and your telescopes. What doubts I might set at rest for instance about the planetary system, among the people who can see, if I could only stretch out far enough to touch the stars."

"This is talking sheer nonsense, Lucilla!"

"Is it? Just tell me which knows best in the dark—my touch or your eyes? Who has got a sense that she can always trust to serve her equally well through the whole four-and-twenty hours? You or me? But for Oscar—to speak in sober earnest, this time—I tell you I would much rather perfect the sense in me that I have already got, than have a sense given to me that I have not got. Until I knew Oscar, I don't think I ever honestly envied any of you the use of your eyes."

"You astonish me, Lucilla!"

She rattled her teaspoon impatiently in her empty cup.

"Can you always trust your eyes, even in broad daylight?" she burst out. "How often do they deceive you, in the simplest things? What did I hear you all disputing about the other day in the garden? You were looking at some view?"

"Yes—at the view down the alley of trees at the other end of the churchyard wall."

"Some object in the alley had attracted general notice—had it not?"

"Yes—an object at the further end of it."

"I heard you up here. You all differed in opinion, in spite of your wonderful eyes. My father said it moved. You said it stood still. Oscar said it was a man. Mrs. Finch said it was a calf. Nugent ran off, and examined this amazing object at close quarters. And what did it turn out to be? A stump of an old tree blown across the road in the night! Why am I to envy people the possession of a sense which plays them such tricks as that? No! no! Herr Grosse is going to 'cut into my cataracts,' as he calls it—because I am going to be married to a man I love; and I fancy, like a fool, I may love him better still, if I can see him. I may be quite wrong," she added archly. "It may end in my not loving him half as well as I do now!"

I thought of Oscar's face, and felt a sickening fear that she might be speaking far more seriously than she suspected. I tried to change the subject. No! Her imaginative nature had found its way into a new region of speculation before I could open my lips.

"I associate light," she said thoughtfully, "with all that is beautiful and heavenly—and dark with all that is vile and horrible and devilish. I wonder how light and dark will look to me when I see?"

"I believe they will astonish you," I answered, "by being entirely unlike what you fancy them to be now."

She started. I had alarmed her without intending it.

"Will Oscar's face be utterly unlike what I fancy it to be now?" she asked, in suddenly altered tones. "Do you mean to say that I have not had the right image of him in my mind all this time?"

I tried again to draw her off to another topic. What more could I do—with my tongue tied by the German's warning to us not to agitate her, in the face of the operation to be performed on the next day?

It was quite useless. She went on, as before, without heeding me.

"Have I no means of judging rightly what Oscar is like?" she said. "I touch my own face; I know how long it is and how broad it is; I know how big the different features are, and where they are. And then I touch Oscar, and compare his face with my knowledge of my own face. Not a single detail escapes me. I see him in my mind as plainly as you see me across this table. Do you mean to say, when I see him with my eyes, that I shall discover something perfectly new to me? I don't believe it!" She started up impatiently, and took a turn in the room. "Oh!" she exclaimed, with a stamp of her foot, "why can't I take laudanum enough, or chloroform enough to kill me for the next six weeks—and then come to life again when the German takes the bandage off my eyes!" She sat down once more, and drifted all on a sudden into a question of pure morality. "Tell me this," she said. "Is the greatest virtue, the virtue which it is most difficult to practice?"

"I suppose so," I answered.

She drummed with both hands on the table, petulantly, viciously, as hard as she could.

"Then, Madame Pratolungo," she said, "the greatest of all the virtues is—Patience. Oh, my friend, how I hate the greatest of all the virtues at this moment!"

That ended it—there the conversation found its way into other topics at last.

Thinking afterwards of the new side of her mind which Lucilla had shown to me, I derived one consolation from what had passed at the breakfast-table. If Mr. Sebright proved to be right, and if the operation failed after all, I had Lucilla's word for it that blindness, of itself, is not the terrible affliction to the blind which the rest of us fancy it to be—because we can see.

Towards half-past seven in the evening, I went out alone, as I had planned, to meet Oscar on his return from London.

At a long straight stretch of the road, I saw him advancing towards me. He was walking more rapidly than usual, and singing as he walked. Even through its livid discoloration, the poor fellow's face looked radiant with happiness as he came nearer. He waved his walking-stick exultingly in the air. "Good news!" he called out at the top of his voice. "Mr. Sebright has made me a happy man again!" I had never before seen him so like Nugent in manner, as I now saw him when we met and he shook hands with me.

"Tell me all about it," I said.

He gave me his arm; and, talking all the way, we walked back slowly to Dimchurch.

"In the first place," he began, "Mr. Sebright holds to his own opinion more firmly than ever. He feels absolutely certain that the operation will fail."

"Is that your good news?" I asked reproachfully.

"No," he said. "Though, mind, I own to my shame there was a time when I almost hoped it would fail. Mr. Sebright has put me in a better frame of mind. I have little or nothing to dread from the success of the operation—if, by any extraordinary chance, it should succeed. I remind you of Mr. Sebright's opinion merely to give you a right idea of the tone which he took with me at starting. He only consented under protest to contemplate the event which Lucilla and Herr Grosse consider to be a certainty. 'If the statement of your position requires it,' he said, 'I will admit that it is barely possible she may be able to see you two months hence. Now begin.' I began by informing him of my marriage engagement."

"Shall I tell you how Mr. Sebright received the information?" I said. "He held his tongue, and made you a bow."

Oscar laughed.

"Quite true!" he answered. "I told him next of Lucilla's extraordinary antipathy to dark people, and dark shades of color of all kinds. Can you guess what he said to me when I had done?"

I owned that my observation of Mr. Sebright's character did not extend to guessing that.

"He said it was a common antipathy in his experience of the blind. It was one among the many strange influences exercised by blindness on the mind. 'The physical affliction has its mysterious moral influence,' he said. 'We can observe it, but we can't explain it. The special antipathy which you mention, is an incurable antipathy, except on one condition—the recovery of the sight.' There he stopped. I entreated him to go on. No! He declined to go on until I had finished what I had to say to him first. I had my confession still to make to him—and I made it."

"You concealed nothing?"

"Nothing. I laid my weakness bare before him. I told him that Lucilla was still firmly convinced that Nugent's was the discolored face, instead of mine. And then I put the question—What am I to do?"

"And how did he reply?"

"In these words:—'If you ask me what you are to do, in the event of her remaining blind (which I tell you again will be the event), I decline to advise you. Your own conscience and your own sense of honor must decide the question. On the other hand, if you ask me what you are to do, in the event of her recovering her sight, I can answer you unreservedly in the plainest terms. Leave things as they are; and wait till she sees.' Those were his own words. Oh, the load that they took off my mind! I made him repeat them—I declare I was almost afraid to trust the evidence of my own ears."

I understood the motive of Oscar's good spirits, better than I understood the motive of Mr. Sebright's advice. "Did he give his reasons?" I asked.

"You shall hear his reasons directly. He insisted on first satisfying himself that I thoroughly understood my position at that moment. 'The prime condition of success, as Herr Grosse has told you,' he said, 'is the perfect tranquillity of the patient. If you make your confession to the young lady when you get back to-night to Dimchurch, you throw her into a state of excitement which will render it impossible for my German colleague to operate on her to-morrow. If you defer your confession, the medical necessities of the case force you to be silent, until the professional attendance of the oculist has ceased. There is your position! My advice to you is to adopt the last alternative. Wait (and make the other persons in the secret wait) until the result of the operation has declared itself.' There I stopped him. 'Do you mean that I am to be present, on the first occasion when she is able to use her eyes?' I asked. 'Am I to let her see me, without a word beforehand to prepare her for the color of my face?'"

We were now getting to the interesting part of it. You English people, when you are out walking and are carrying on a conversation with a friend, never come to a standstill at the points of interest. We foreigners, on the other hand, invariably stop. I surprised Oscar by suddenly pulling him up in the middle of the road.

"What is the matter?" he asked.

"Go on!" I said impatiently.

"I can't go on," he rejoined. "You're holding me."

I held him tighter than ever, and ordered him more resolutely than ever to go on. Oscar resigned himself to a halt (foreign fashion) on the high road.

"Mr. Sebright met my question by putting a question on his side," he resumed. "He asked me how I proposed to prepare her for the color of my face."

"And what did you tell him?"

"I said I had planned to make an excuse for leaving Dimchurch—and, once away, to prepare her, by writing, for what she might expect to see when I returned."

"What did he say to that?"

"He wouldn't hear of it. He said, 'I strongly recommend you to be present on the first occasion when she is capable (if she ever is capable) of using her sight. I attach the greatest importance to her being able to correct the hideous and absurd image now in her mind of a face like yours, by seeing you as you really are at the earliest available opportunity.'"

We were just walking on again, when certain words in that last sentence startled me. I stopped short once more.

"Hideous and absurd image?" I repeated, thinking instantly of my conversation of that morning with Lucilla. "What did Mr. Sebright mean by using such language as that?"

"Just what I asked him. His reply will interest you. It led him into that explanation of his motives which you inquired for just now. Shall we walk on?"

My petrified foreign feet recovered their activity. We went on again.

"When I had spoken to Mr. Sebright of Lucilla's inveterate prejudice," Oscar continued, "he had surprised me by saying that it was common in his experience, and was only curable by her restoration to sight. In support of those assertions, he now told me of two interesting cases which had occurred in his professional practice. The first was the case of the little daughter of an Indian officer—blind from infancy like Lucilla. After operating successfully, the time came when he could permit his patient to try her sight—that is to say, to try if she could see sufficiently well at first, to distinguish dark objects from light. Among the members of the household assembled to witness the removal of the bandage, was an Indian nurse who had accompanied the family to England. The first person the child saw was her mother—a fair woman. She clasped her little hands in astonishment, and that was all. At the next turn of her head, she saw the dark Indian nurse and instantly screamed with terror. Mr. Sebright owned to me that he could not explain it. The child could have no possible association with colors. Yet there nevertheless was the most violent hatred and horror of a dark object (the hatred and horror peculiar to the blind) expressing itself unmistakably in a child of ten years old! My first thought, while he was telling me this, was of myself, and of my chance with Lucilla. My first question was, 'Did the child get used to the nurse?' I can give you his answer in his own words. 'In a week's time, I found the child sitting in the nurse's lap as composedly as I am sitting in this chair.'—"That is encouraging—isn't it?"

"Most encouraging—nobody can deny it."

"The second instance was more curious still. This time the case was the case of a grown man—and the object was to show me what strange fantastic images (utterly unlike the reality) the blind form of the people about them. The patient was married, and was to see his wife (as Lucilla is one day to see me) for the first time. He had been told, before he married her, that she was personally disfigured by the scar of a wound on one of her cheeks. The poor woman—ah, how well I can understand her!—trembled for the consequences. The man who had loved her dearly while he was blind, might hate her when he saw her scarred face. Her husband had been the first to console her when the operation was determined on. He declared that his sense of touch, and the descriptions given to him by others, had enabled him to form, in his own mind, the most complete and faithful image of his wife's face. Nothing that Mr. Sebright could say would induce him to believe that it was physically impossible for him to form a really correct idea of any object, animate or inanimate, which he had never seen. He wouldn't hear of it. He was so certain of the result, that he held his wife's hand in his, to encourage her, when the bandage was removed from him. At his first look at her, he uttered a cry of horror, and fell back in his chair in a swoon. His wife, poor thing, was distracted. Mr. Sebright did his best to compose her, and waited till her husband was able to answer the questions put to him. It then appeared that his blind idea of his wife, and of her disfigurement had been something so grotesquely and horribly unlike the reality, that it was hard to know whether to laugh or to tremble at it. She was as beautiful as an angel, by comparison with her husband's favorite idea of her—and yet, because it was his idea, he was absolutely disgusted and terrified at the first sight of her! In a few weeks he was able to compare his wife with other women, to look at pictures, to understand what beauty was and what ugliness was—and from that time they have lived together as happy a married couple as any in the kingdom."

I was not quite sure which way this last example pointed. It alarmed me when I thought of Lucilla. I came to a standstill again.

"How did Mr. Sebright apply this second case to Lucilla and to you?" I asked.

"You shall hear," said Oscar. "He first appealed to the case as supporting his assertion that Lucilla's idea of me must be utterly unlike what I am myself. He asked if I was now satisfied that she could have no correct conception of what faces and colors were really like? and if I agreed with him in believing that the image in her mind of the man with the blue face, was in all probability something fantastically and hideously unlike the reality? After what I had heard, I agreed with him as a matter of course. 'Very well,' says Mr. Sebright. 'Now let its remember that there is one important difference between the case of Miss Finch, and the case that I have just mentioned. The husband's blind idea of his wife was the husband's favorite idea. The shock of the first sight of her, was plainly a shock to him on that account. Now Miss Finch's blind idea of the blue face is, on the contrary, a hateful idea to her—the image is an image that she loathes. Is it not fair to conclude from this, that the first sight of you as you really are, is likely to be, in her case, a relief to her instead of a shock? Reasoning from my experience, I reach that conclusion; and I advise you, in your own interests, to be present when the bandage is taken off. Even if I prove to be mistaken—even if she is not immediately reconciled to the sight of you—there is the other example of the child and the Indian nurse to satisfy you that it is only a question of time. Sooner or later, she will take the discovery as any other young lady would take it. At first, she will be indignant with you for deceiving her; and then, if you are sure of your place in her affections, she will end in forgiving you.—There is my view of your position, and there are the grounds on which I form it! In the meantime, my own opinion remains unshaken. I firmly believe that you will never have occasion to act on the advice that I have given to you. When the bandage is taken off, the chances are five hundred to one that she is no nearer to seeing you then than she is now.' These were his last words—and on that we parted."

Oscar and I walked on again for a little way, in silence.

I had nothing to say against Mr. Sebright's reasons; it was impossible to question the professional experience from which they were drawn. As to blind people in general, I felt no doubt that his advice was good, and that his conclusions were arrived at correctly. But Lucilla's was no ordinary character. My experience of her was better experience than Mr. Sebright's—and the more I thought of the future, the less inclined I felt to share Oscar's hopeful view. She was just the person to say something or do something, at the critical moment of the experiment, which would take the wisest previous calculation by surprise. Oscar's prospects never had looked darker to me than they looked at that moment.

It would have been useless and cruel to have said to him what I have just said here. I put as bright a face on it as I could, and asked if he proposed to follow Mr. Sebright's advice.

"Yes," he said. "With a certain reservation of my own, which occurred to me after I had left his house."

"May I ask what it is?"

"Certainly. I mean to beg Nugent to leave Dimchurch, before Lucilla tries her sight for the first time. He will do that, I know, to please me."

"And when he has done it, what then?"

"Then I mean to be present—as Mr. Sebright suggested—when the bandage is taken off."

"Previously telling Lucilla," I interposed, "that it is you who are in the room?"

"No. There I take the precaution that I alluded to just now. I propose to leave Lucilla under the impression that it is I who have left Dimchurch, and that Nugent's face is the face she sees. If Mr. Sebright proves to be right, and if her first sensation is a sensation of relief, I will own the truth to her the same day. If not, I will wait to make my confession until she has become reconciled to the sight of me. That plan meets every possible emergency. It is one of the few good ideas that my stupid head has hit on since I have been at Dimchurch."

He said those last words with such an innocent air of triumph, that I really could not find it in my heart to damp his ardor by telling him what I thought of his idea. All I said was, "Don't forget, Oscar, that the cleverest plans are at the mercy of circumstances. At the last moment, an accident may happen which will force you to speak out."

We came in sight of the rectory as I gave him that final warning. Nugent was strolling up and down the road on the look-out for us. I left Oscar to tell his story over again to his brother, and went into the house.

Lucilla was at her piano when I entered the sitting-room. She was not only playing—but (a rare thing with her) singing too. The song was, poetry and music both, of her own composing. "I shall see him! I shall see him!" In those four words the composition began and ended. She adapted them to all the happy melodies in her memory. She accompanied them with hands that seemed to be mad for joy—hands that threatened every moment to snap the chords of the instrument. Never, since my first day at the rectory, had I heard such a noise in our quiet sitting-room as I heard now. She was in a fever of exhilaration which, in my foreboding frame of mind at that moment, it pained and shocked me to see. I lifted her off the music-stool, and shut up the piano by main force.

"Compose yourself for heaven's sake," I said. "Do you want to be completely exhausted when the German comes tomorrow?"

That consideration instantly checked her. She suddenly became quiet, with the abrupt facility of a child.

"I forgot that," she said, sitting down in a corner, with a face of dismay. "He might refuse to perform the operation! Oh, my dear, quiet me down somehow. Get a book, and read to me."

I got the book. Ah, the poor author! Neither she nor I paid the slightest attention to him. Worse still, we abused him for not interesting us—and then shut him up with a bang, and pushed him rudely into his place on the book-shelf, and left him upside down and went to bed.

She was standing at her window when I went in to wish her good night. The mellow moonlight fell tenderly on her lovely face.

"Moon that I have never seen," she murmured softly, "I feel you looking at me! Is the time coming when I shall look at You?" She turned from the window, and eagerly put my fingers on her pulse. "Am I quite composed again?" she asked. "Will he find me well to-morrow? Feel it! feel it! Is it quiet now?"

I felt it—throbbing faster and faster.

"Sleep will quiet it," I said—and kissed her, and left her.



She slept well. As for me, I passed such a wretched night, and got up so completely worn out, that I had to go back to my room after breakfast, and lie down again. Lucilla persuaded me to do it. "Herr Grosse won't be here till the afternoon," she said. "Rest till he comes."

We had reckoned without allowing for the eccentric character of our German surgeon. Excepting the business of his profession, Herr Grosse did everything by impulse, and nothing by rule. I had not long fallen into a broken unrefreshing sleep, when I felt Zillah's hand on my shoulder, and heard Zillah's voice in my ear.

"Please to get up, ma'am! He's here—he has come from London by the morning train."

I hurried into the sitting-room.

There, at the table, sat Herr Grosse with an open instrument-case before him; his wild black eyes gloating over a hideous array of scissors, probes, and knives, and his shabby hat hard by with lint and bandages huddled together anyhow inside it. And there stood Lucilla by his side, stooping over him—with one hand laid familiarly on his shoulder, and with the other deftly fingering one of his horrid instruments to find out what it was like!

THE END OF THE FIRST PART



PART THE SECOND



CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FOURTH

Nugent shows his Hand

I CLOSED the First Part of my narrative on the day of the operation, the twenty-fifth of June.

I open the Second Part, between six and seven weeks later, on the ninth of August.

How did the time pass at Dimchurch in that interval?

Searching backwards in my memory, I call to life again the domestic history of the six weeks. It looks, on retrospection, miserably dull and empty of incident. I wonder when I contemplate it now, how we got through that weary interval—how we bore that forced inaction, that unrelieved oppression of suspense.



Changing from bed-room to sitting-room, from sitting-room back to bed-room; with the daylight always shut out; with the bandages always on, except when the surgeon looked at her eyes; Lucilla bore the imprisonment—and worse than the imprisonment, the uncertainty—of her period of probation, with the courage that can endure anything, the courage sustained by Hope. With books, with music, with talk—above all, with Love to help her—she counted her way calmly through the dull succession of hours and days till the time came which was to decide the question in dispute between the oculists—the terrible question of which of the two, Mr. Sebright or Herr Grosse, was right.

I was not present at the examination which finally decided all doubt. I joined Oscar in the garden—quite as incapable as he was of exerting the slightest self-control. We paced silently backwards and forwards on the lawn, like two animals in a cage. Zillah was the only witness present when the German examined our poor darling's eyes; Nugent engaging to wait in the next room and announce the result from the window. As the event turned out, Herr Grosse was beforehand with him. Once more we heard his broken English shouting, "Hi-hi-hoi! hoi-hi! hoi-hi!" Once more, we beheld his huge silk handkerchief waving at the window. I turned sick and faint under the excitement of the moment—under the rapture (it was nothing less) of hearing those three electrifying words: "She will see!" Mercy! how we did abuse Mr. Sebright, when we were all reunited again in Lucilla's room!

The first excitement over, we had our difficulties to contend with next.

From the moment when she was positively informed that the operation had succeeded, our once-patient Lucilla developed into a new being. She now rose in perpetual revolt against the caution which still deferred the day on which she was to be allowed to make the first trial of her sight. It required all my influence, backed by Oscar's entreaties, and strengthened by the furious foreign English of our excellent German surgeon (Herr Grosse had a temper of his own, I can tell you!) to prevent her from breaking through the medical discipline which held her in its grasp. When she became quite unmanageable, and vehemently abused him to his face, our good Grosse used to swear at her, in a compound bad language of his own, with a tremendous aspiration at the beginning of it, which always set matters right by making her laugh. I see him again as I write, leaving the room on these occasions, with his eyes blazing through his spectacles, and his shabby hat cocked sideways on his head. "Soh, you little-spitfire-Feench! If you touch that bandages when I have put him on—Ho-Damn-Damn! I say no more. Good-bye!"

From Lucilla I turn to the twin-brothers next.

Tranquilized as to the future, after his interview with Mr. Sebright, Oscar presented himself at his best during the time of which I am now writing. Lucilla's main reliance in her days in the darkened room, was on what her lover could do to relieve and to encourage her. He never once failed her; his patience was perfect; his devotion was inexhaustible. It is sad to say so, in view of what happened afterwards; but I only tell a necessary truth when I declare that he immensely strengthened his hold on her affections, in those last days of her blindness when his society was most precious to her. Ah, how fervently she used to talk of him when she and I were left together at night! Forgive me if I leave this part of the history of the courtship untold. I don't like to write of it—I don't like to think of it. Let us get on to something else.

Nugent comes next. I would give a great deal, poor as I am, to be able to leave him out. It is not to be done. I must write about that lost wretch, and you must read about him, whether we like it or not.

The days of Lucilla's imprisonment, were also the days when my favorite disappointed me, for the first time. He and his brother seemed to change places. It was Nugent now who appeared to disadvantage by comparison with Oscar. He surprised and grieved his brother by leaving Browndown. "All I can do for you, I have done," he said. "I can be of no further use for the present to anybody. Let me go. I am stagnating in this miserable place—I must, and will, have change." Oscar's entreaties, in Nugent's present frame of mind, failed to move him. Away he went one morning, without bidding anybody goodbye. He had talked of being absent for a week—he remained away for a month. We heard of him, leading a wild life, among a vicious set of men. It was reported that a frantic restlessness possessed him which nobody could understand. He came back as suddenly as he had left us. His variable nature had swung round, in the interval, to the opposite extreme. He was full of repentance for his reckless conduct; he was in a state of depression which defied rousing; he despaired of himself and his future. Sometimes he talked of going back to America; and sometimes he threatened to close his career by enlisting as a private soldier. Would any other person, in my place, have seen which way these signs pointed? I doubt it, if that person's mind had been absorbed, as mine was, in watching Lucilla day by day. Even if I had been a suspicious woman by nature—which, thank God, I am not—my distrust must have lain dormant, in the all-subduing atmosphere of suspense hanging heavily on me morning, noon, and night in the darkened room.

So much, briefly, for the sayings and doings of the persons principally concerned in this narrative, during the six weeks which separate Part the First from Part the Second.

I begin again on the ninth of August.

This was the memorable day chosen by Herr Grosse for risking the experiment of removing the bandage, and permitting Lucilla to try her sight for the first time. Conceive for yourselves (don't ask me to describe) the excitement that raged in our obscure little circle, now that we were standing face to face with that grand Event in our lives which I promised to relate in the opening sentence of these pages.

I was the earliest riser at the rectory that morning. My excitable French blood was in a fever. I was irresistibly reminded of myself, at a time long past—the time when my glorious Pratolungo and I, succumbing to Fate and tyrants, fled to England for safety; martyrs to that ungrateful Republic (long live the Republic!) for which I laid down my money and my husband his life.

I opened my window, and hailed the good omen of sunrise in a clear sky. Just as I was turning away again from the view, I saw a figure steal out from the shrubbery and appear on the lawn. The figure came nearer. I recognized Oscar.

"What in the world are you doing there, at this time in the morning?" I called out.

He lifted his finger to his lips, and came close under my window before he answered.

"Hush!" he said. "Don't let Lucilla hear you. Come down to me as soon as you can. I am waiting to speak to you."

When I joined him in the garden, I saw directly that something had gone wrong.

"Bad news from Browndown?" I asked.

"Nugent has disappointed me," he answered. "Do you remember the evening when you met me after my consultation with Mr. Sebright?"

"Perfectly."

"I told you that I meant to ask Nugent to leave Dimchurch, on the day when Lucilla tried her sight for the first time."

"Well?"

"Well—he refuses to leave Dimchurch."

"Have you explained your motives to him?"

"Carefully—before I asked him to go. I told him how impossible it was to say what might happen. I reminded him that it might be of the utmost importance to me to preserve the impression now in Lucilla's mind—for a certain time only—after Lucilla could see. I promised, the moment she became reconciled to the sight of me, to recall him, and in his presence to tell her the truth. All that I said to him—and how do you think he answered me?"

"Did he positively refuse?"

"No. He walked away from me to the window, and considered a little. Then he turned round suddenly and said 'What did you tell me was Mr. Sebright's opinion? Mr. Sebright thought she would be relieved instead of being terrified. In that case, what need is there for me to go away? You can acknowledge at once that she has seen your face, and not mine?' He put his hands in his pockets when he had said that (you know Nugent's downright way)—and turned back to the window as if he had settled everything."

"What did you say, on your side?"

"I said, 'Suppose Mr. Sebright is wrong?' He only answered, 'Suppose Mr. Sebright is right?' I followed him to the window—I never heard him speak so sourly to me as he spoke at that moment. 'What is your objection to going away for a day or two?' I asked. 'My objection is soon stated,' he answered. 'I am sick of these everlasting complications. It is useless and cruel to carry on the deception any longer. Mr. Sebright's advice is the wise advice and the right advice. Let her see you as you are.' With that answer, he walked out of the room. Something has upset him—I can't imagine what it is. Do pray see what you can make of him! My only hope is in you."

I own I felt reluctant to interfere. Suddenly and strangely as Nugent had altered his point of view, it seemed to me undeniable that Nugent was right. At the same time, Oscar looked so disappointed and distressed, that it was really impossible, on that day above all others, to pain him additionally by roundly saying No. I undertook to do what I could—and I inwardly hoped that circumstances would absolve me from the necessity of doing anything at all.

Circumstances failed to justify my selfish confidence in them.

I was out in the village, after breakfast, on a domestic errand connected with the necessary culinary preparations for the reception of Herr Grosse—when I heard my name pronounced behind me, and, turning round, found myself face to face with Nugent.

"Has my brother been bothering you this morning," he asked, "before I was up?"

I instantly noticed a return in him, as he said that, to the same dogged ungracious manner which had perplexed and displeased me at my last confidential interview with him in the rectory garden.

"Oscar has been speaking to me this morning," I replied.

"About me?"

"About you. You have distressed and disappointed him——"

"I know! I know! Oscar is worse than a child. I am beginning to lose all patience with him."

"I am sorry to hear you say that, Nugent. You have borne with him so kindly thus far—surely you can make allowances for him to-day? His whole future may depend on what happens in Lucilla's sitting-room a few hours hence."

"He is making a mountain out of a mole-hill—and so are you."

Those words were spoken bitterly—almost rudely. I answered sharply on my side.

"You are the last person living who has any right to say that. Oscar is in a false position towards Lucilla, with your knowledge and consent. In your brother's interests, you agreed to the fraud that has been practiced on her. In your brother's interests, again, you are asked to leave Dimchurch. Why do you refuse?"

"I refuse, because I have come round to your way of thinking. What did you say of Oscar and of me, in the summer-house? You said we were taking a cruel advantage of Lucilla's blindness. You were right. It was cruel not to have told her the truth. I won't be a party to concealing the truth from her any longer! I refuse to persist in deceiving her—in meanly deceiving her—on the day when she recovers her sight!"

It is entirely beyond my power to describe the tone in which he made that reply. I can only declare that it struck me dumb for the moment. I drew a step nearer to him. With vague misgivings in me, I looked him searchingly in the face. He looked back at me, without shrinking.

"Well?" he asked—with a hard smile which defied me to put him in the wrong.

I could discover nothing in his face—I could only follow my instincts as a woman. Those instincts warned me to accept his explanation.

"I am to understand then that you have decided on staying here?" I said.

"Certainly!"

"What do you propose to do, when Herr Grosse arrives, and we assemble in Lucilla's room?"

"I propose to be present among the rest of you, at the most interesting moment of Lucilla's life."

"No! you don't propose that!"

"I do!"

"You have forgotten something, Mr. Nugent Dubourg."

"What is it, Madame Pratolungo?"

"You have forgotten that Lucilla believes the brother with the discolored face to be You, and the brother with the fair complexion to be Oscar. You have forgotten that the surgeon has expressly forbidden us to agitate her by entering into any explanations before he allows her to use her eyes. You have forgotten that the very deception which you have just positively refused to go on with, will be nevertheless a deception continued, if you are present when Lucilla sees. Your own resolution pledges you not to enter the rectory doors until Lucilla has discovered the truth." In those words I closed the vice on him. I had got Mr. Nugent Dubourg!

He turned deadly pale. His eyes dropped before mine for the first time.

"Thank you for reminding me," he said. "I had forgotten."

He pronounced those submissive words in a suddenly-lowered voice. Something in his tone, or something in the dropping of his eyes, set my heart beating quickly, with a certain vague expectation which I was unable to realize to myself.

"You agree with me," I said, "that you cannot be one amongst us at the rectory? What will you do?"

"I will remain at Browndown," he answered.

I felt he was lying. Don't ask for my reasons: I have no reasons to give. When he said "I will remain at Browndown," I felt he was lying.

"Why not do what Oscar asks of you?" I went on. "If you are absent, you may as well be in one place as in another. There is plenty of time still to leave Dimchurch."

He looked up as suddenly as he had looked down.

"Do you and Oscar think me a stock or a stone?" he burst out angrily.

"What do you mean?"

"Who are you indebted to for what is going to happen to-day?" he went on, more and more passionately. "You are indebted to Me. Who among you all stood alone in refusing to believe that she was blind for life? I did! Who brought the man here who has given her back her sight? I brought the man! And I am the one person who is to be left in ignorance of how it ends. The others are to be present: I am to be sent away. The others are to see it: I am to hear by post (if any of you think of writing to me) what she does, what she says, how she looks, at the first heavenly moment when she opens her eyes on the world." He flung up his hand in the air, and burst out savagely with a bitter laugh. "I astonish you, don't I? I am claiming a position which I have no right to occupy. What interest can I feel in it? Oh God! what do I care about the woman to whom I have given a new life?" His voice broke into a sob at those last wild words. He tore at the breast of his coat as if he was suffocating—and turned, and left me.

I stood rooted to the spot. In one breathless instant, the truth broke on me like a revelation. At last I had penetrated the terrible secret. Nugent loved her.

My first impulse, when I recovered myself, hurried me at the top of my speed back to the rectory. For a moment or two, I think I must really have lost my senses. I felt a frantic suspicion that he had gone into the house, and that he was making his way to Lucilla at that moment. When I found that all was quiet—when Zillah had satisfied me that no visitor had come near our side of the rectory—I calmed down a little, and went back to the garden to compose myself before I ventured into Lucilla's presence.

After awhile, I got over the first horror of it, and saw my own position plainly. There was not a living soul at Dimchurch in whom I could confide. Come what might of it, in this dreadful emergency, I must trust in myself alone.

I had just arrived at that startling conclusion; I had shed some bitter tears when I remembered how hardly I had judged poor Oscar on more than one occasion; I had decided that my favorite Nugent was the most hateful villain living, and that I would leave nothing undone that the craft of a woman could compass to drive him out of the place—when I was forced back to present necessities by the sound of Zillah's voice calling to me from the house. I went to her directly. The nurse had a message for me from her young mistress. My poor Lucilla was lonely and anxious: she was surprised at my leaving her, she insisted on seeing me immediately.

I took my first precaution against a surprise from Nugent, as I crossed the threshold of the door.

"Our dear child must not be disturbed by visitors to-day," I said to Zillah. "If Mr. Nugent Dubourg comes here and asks for her—don't tell Lucilla; tell me."

This said, I went up-stairs, and joined my darling in the darkened room.



CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIFTH

Lucilla tries her Sight

SHE was sitting alone in the dim light, with the bandage over her eyes, with her pretty hands crossed patiently on her lap. My heart swelled in me as I looked at her, and felt the horrid discovery that I had made still present in my mind. "Forgive me for leaving you," I said in as steady a voice as I could command at the moment—and kissed her.

She instantly discovered my agitation, carefully as I thought I had concealed it.

"You are frightened too!" she exclaimed, taking my hands in hers.

"Frightened, my love?" I repeated. (I was perfectly stupefied; I really did not know what to say!)

"Yes. Now the time is so near, I feel my courage failing me. I forbode all sorts of horrible things. Oh! when will it be over? what will Oscar look like when I see him?"

I answered the first question. Who could answer the second?

"Herr Grosse comes to us by the morning train," I said. "It will soon be over."

"Where is Oscar?"

"On his way here, I have no doubt."

"Describe him to me once more," she said eagerly. "For the last time, before I see. His eyes, his hair, his complexion—everything!"

How I should have got through the painful task which she had innocently imposed on me, if I had attempted to perform it, I hardly like to think. To my infinite relief, I was interrupted at my first word by the opening of the door, and the sudden appearance of a family deputation in the room.

First, strutting with slow and solemn steps, with one hand laid pathetically on the breast of his clerical waistcoat, appeared Reverend Finch. After him, came his wife, shorn of all her proper accompaniments—except the baby. Without her novel, without her jacket, petticoat, or shawl, without even the handkerchief which she was always losing—clothed, for the first time in my experience, in a complete gown—the metamorphosis of damp Mrs. Finch was complete. But for the baby, I believe I should have taken her, in the dim light, for a stranger! She stood (apparently doubtful of her reception) hesitating in the doorway, and so hiding a third member of the deputation—who appealed piteously to the general notice in a small voice which I knew well, and in a form of address familiar to me from past experience.

"Jicks wants to come in."

The rector took his hand from his waistcoat, and held it up in faint protest against the intrusion of the third member. Mrs. Finch moved mechanically into the room. Jicks appeared, hugging her disreputable doll, and showing signs of recent wandering in the white dust which dropped on the carpet from her frock and her shoes, as she advanced towards the place in which I was sitting. Arrived in front of me, she peered quaintly up at my face, through the obscurity of the room; lifted her doll by the legs; hit me a smart rap with the head of it on my knee; and said—

"Jicks will sit here."

I rubbed my knee, and enthroned Jicks as ordered. At the same time Mr. Finch solemnly stalked up to his daughter; laid his hands on her head; raised his eyes to the ceiling; and said in bass notes that rumbled with paternal emotion, "Bless you, my child!"

At the sound of her husband's magnificent voice, Mrs. Finch became herself again. She said meekly, "How d'ye do, Lucilla?"—and sat down in a corner, and suckled the baby.

Mr. Finch set in for one of his harangues.

"My advice has been neglected, Lucilla. My paternal influence has been repudiated. My Moral Weight has been, so to speak, set aside. I don't complain. Understand me—I simply state sad facts." (Here he became aware of my existence.) "Good morning, Madame Pratolungo; I hope I see you well?—There has been variance between us, Lucilla. I come, my child, with healing on my wings (healing being understood, for present purposes, as reconciliation)—I come, and bring Mrs. Finch with me—don't speak, Mrs. Finch!—to offer my heartfelt wishes, my fervent prayers, on this the most eventful day in my daughter's life. No vulgar curiosity has turned my steps this way. No hint shall escape my lips, touching any misgivings which I may still feel as to this purely worldly interference with the ways of an inscrutable Providence. I am here as parent and peacemaker. My wife accompanies me—don't speak, Mrs. Finch!—as step-parent and step-peacemaker. (You understand the distinction, Madame Pratolungo? Thank you. Good creature.) Shall I preach forgiveness of injuries from the pulpit, and not practice that forgiveness at home? Can I remain, on this momentous occasion, at variance with my child? Lucilla! I forgive you. With full heart and tearful eyes, I forgive you. (You have never had any children, I believe, Madame Pratolungo? Ah! you cannot possibly understand this. Not your fault. Good creature. Not your fault.) The kiss of peace, my child; the kiss of peace." He solemnly bent his bristly head, and deposited the kiss of peace on Lucilla's forehead. He sighed superbly, and in a burst of magnanimity, held out his hand next to me. "My Hand, Madame Pratolungo. Compose yourself. Don't cry. God bless you. Mrs. Finch, deeply affected by her husband's noble conduct, began to sob hysterically. The baby, disarranged in his proceedings by the emotions of his mama, set up a sympathetic scream. Mr. Finch crossed the room to them, with domestic healing on his wings. "This does you credit, Mrs. Finch; but, under the circumstances, it must not be continued. Control yourself, in consideration of the infant. Mysterious mechanism of Nature!" cried the rector, raising his prodigious voice over the louder and louder screeching of the baby. "Marvelous and beautiful sympathy which makes the maternal sustenance the conducting medium, as it were, of disturbance between the mother and child. What problems confront us, what forces environ us, even in this mortal life! Nature! Maternity! Inscrutable Providence!"

"Inscrutable Providence" was the rector's fatal phrase—it always brought with it an interruption; and it brought one now. Before Mr. Finch (brimful of pathetic apostrophes) could burst into more exclamations, the door opened, and Oscar walked into the room.

Lucilla instantly recognized his footstep.

"Any signs, Oscar, of Herr Grosse?" she asked.

"Yes. His chaise has been seen on the road. He will be here directly."

Giving that answer, and passing by my chair to place himself on the other side of Lucilla, Oscar cast at me one imploring look—a look which said plainly, "Don't desert me when the time comes!" I nodded my head to show that I understood him and felt for him. He sat down in the vacant chair by Lucilla, and took her hand in silence. It was hard to say which of the two felt the position, at that trying moment, most painfully. I don't think I ever saw any sight so simply and irresistibly touching as the sight of those two poor young creatures sitting hand in hand, waiting the event which was to make the happiness or the misery of their future lives.

"Have you seen anything of your brother?" I asked, putting the question in as careless a tone as my devouring anxiety would allow me to assume.

"Nugent has gone to meet Herr Grosse."

Oscar's eyes once more encountered mine, as he replied in those terms; I saw again the imploring look more marked in them than ever. It was plain to him, as it was plain to me, that Nugent had gone to meet the German, with the purpose of making Herr Grosse the innocent means of bringing him into the house.

Before I could speak again, Mr. Finch, recovering himself after the interruption which had silenced him, saw his opportunity of setting in for another harangue. Mrs. Finch had left off sobbing; the baby had left off screaming; the rest of us were silent and nervous. In a word, Mr. Finch's domestic congregation was entirely at Mr. Finch's mercy. He strutted up to Oscar's chair. Was he going to propose to read Hamlet? No! He was going to invoke a blessing on Oscar's head.

"On this interesting occasion," began the rector in his pulpit tones; "now that we are all united in the same room, all animated by the same hope—I could wish, as pastor and parent (God bless you, Oscar: I look on you as a son. Mrs. Finch, follow my example, look on him as a son!)—I could wish, as pastor and parent, to say a few pious and consoling words——"

The door—the friendly, admirable, judicious door—stopped the coming sermon, in the nick of time, by opening again. Herr Grosse's squat figure and owlish spectacles appeared on the threshold. And behind him (exactly as I had anticipated) stood Nugent Dubourg.

Lucilla turned deadly pale: she had heard the door open, she knew by instinct that the surgeon had come. Oscar got up, stole behind my chair, and whispered to me, "For God's sake, get Nugent out of the room!" I gave him a reassuring squeeze of the hand, and, putting Jicks down on the floor, rose to welcome our good Grosse.

The child, as it happened, was beforehand with me. She and the illustrious oculist had met in the garden at one of the German's professional visits to Lucilla, and had taken an amazing fancy to each other. Herr Grosse never afterwards appeared at the rectory without some unwholesome eatable thing in his pocket for Jicks; who gave him in return as many kisses as he might ask for, and further distinguished him as the only living creature whom she permitted to nurse the disreputable doll. Grasping this same doll now, with both hands, and using it head-foremost, as a kind of battering-ram, Jicks plunged in front of me, and butted with all her might at the surgeon's bandy legs; insisting on a monopoly of his attention before he presumed to speak to any other person in the room. While he was lifting her to a level with his face, and talking to her in his wonderful broken English—while the rector and Mrs. Finch were making the necessary apologies for the child's conduct—Nugent came round from behind Herr Grosse, and drew me mysteriously into a corner of the room. As I followed him, I saw the silent torture of anxiety expressed in Oscar's face as he stood by Lucilla's chair. It did me good; it strung up my resolution to the right pitch; it made me feel myself a match, and more than a match, for Nugent Dubourg.

"I am afraid I behaved in a very odd manner, when we met in the village?" he said. "The fact is, I am not at all well. I have been in a strange feverish state lately. I don't think the air of this place suits me." There he stopped; keeping his eyes steadily fixed on mine, trying to read my mind in my face.

"I am not surprised to hear you say that," I answered. "I have noticed that you have not been looking well lately."

My tone and manner (otherwise perfectly composed) expressed polite sympathy—and nothing more. I saw I puzzled him. He tried again.

"I hope I didn't say or do anything rude?" he went on.

"Oh, no!"

"I was excited—painfully excited. You are too kind to admit it; I am sure I owe you my apologies?"

"No, indeed! you were certainly excited, as you say. But we are all in the same state to-day. The occasion, Mr. Nugent, is your sufficient apology."

Not the slightest sign in my face of any sort of suspicion of him rewarded the close and continued scrutiny with which he regarded me. I saw in his perplexed expression, the certain assurance that I was beating him at his own weapons. He made a last effort to entrap me into revealing that I suspected his secret—he attempted, by irritating my quick temper, to take me by surprise.

"You are no doubt astonished at seeing me here," he resumed. "I have not forgotten that I promised to remain at Browndown instead of coming to the rectory. Don't be angry with me: I am under medical orders which forbid me to keep my promise."

"I don't understand you," I said just as coolly as ever.

"I will explain myself," he rejoined. "You remember that we long since took Grosse into our confidence, on the subject of Oscar's position towards Lucilla?"

"I am not likely to have forgotten it," I answered, "considering that it was I who first warned your brother that Herr Grosse might do terrible mischief by innocently letting out the truth."

"Do you recollect how Grosse took the warning when we gave it to him?"

"Perfectly. He promised to be careful. But, at the same time, he gruffly forbade us to involve him in any more of our family troubles. He said he was determined to preserve his professional freedom of action, without being hampered by domestic difficulties which might concern us, but which did not concern him. Is my memory accurate enough to satisfy you?"

"Your memory is wonderful. You will now understand me when I tell you that Grosse asserts his professional freedom of action on this occasion. I had it from his own lips on our way here. He considers it very important that Lucilla should not be frightened at the moment when she tries her sight. Oscar's face is sure to startle her, if it is the first face she sees. Grosse has accordingly requested me to be present (as the only other young man in the room), and to place myself so that I shall be the first person who attracts her notice. Ask him yourself, Madame Pratolungo, if you don't believe me."

"Of course I believe you!" I answered. "It is useless to dispute the surgeon's orders at such a time as this."

With that, I left him; showing just as much annoyance as an unsuspecting woman, in my position, might have naturally betrayed—and no more. Knowing, as I did, what was going on under the surface, I understood only too plainly what had happened. Nugent had caught at the opportunity which the surgeon had innocently offered to him, as a means of misleading Lucilla at the moment, and (possibly) of taking some base advantage of her afterwards. I trembled inwardly with rage and fear, as I turned my back on him. Our one chance was to make sure of his absence, at the critical moment—and, cudgel my brains as I might, how to reach that end successfully was more than I could see.

When I returned to the other persons in the room, Oscar and Lucilla were still occupying the same positions. Mr. Finch had presented himself (at full length) to Herr Grosse. And Jicks was established on a stool in a corner: devouring a rampant horse, carved in bilious-yellow German gingerbread, with a voracious relish wonderful and terrible to see.

"Ah, my goot Madame Pratolungo!" said Herr Grosse, stopping on his way to Lucilla to shake hands with me. "Have you made anodder lofely Mayonnaise? I have come on purpose with an empty-stomachs, and a wolf's-appetite in fine order. Look at that little Imps," he went on, pointing to Jicks. "Ach Gott! I believe I am in lofe with her. I have sent all the ways to Germany for gingerbreads for Jick. Aha, you Jick! does it stick in your tooths? Is it nice-clammy-sweet?" He glared benevolently at the child through his spectacles; and tucked my hand sentimentally into the breast of his waistcoat. "Promise me a child like adorable Jick," he said solemnly, "I will marry the first wife you bring me—nice womans, nasty womans, I don't care which. Soh! there is my domestic sentiments laid bare before you. Enough of that. Now for my pretty-Feench! Come-begin-begin!"

He crossed the room to Lucilla, and called to Nugent to follow him.

"Open the shutters," he said. "Light-light-light, and plenty of him, for my lofely Feench!"

Nugent opened the shutters, beginning with the lower window, and ending with the window at which Lucilla was sitting. Acting on this plan, he had only to wait where he was, to place himself close by her—to be the first object she saw. He did it. The villain did it. I stepped forward, determined to interfere—and stopped, not knowing what to say or do. I could have beaten my own stupid brains out against the wall. There stood Nugent right before her, as the surgeon turned his patient towards the window. And not the ghost of an idea came to me!

The German stretched out his hairy hands, and took hold of the knot of the bandage to undo it.

Lucilla trembled from head to foot.

Herr Grosse hesitated—looked at her—let go of the bandage-and lifting one of her hands, laid his fingers on her pulse.

In the moment of silence that followed, I had one of my inspirations. The missing idea turned up in my brains at last.

"Soh!" cried Grosse, dropping her hand with a sudden outbreak of annoyance and surprise. "Who has been frightening my pretty Feench? Why these cold trembles? these sinking pulses? Some of you tell me—what does it mean?"

Here was my opportunity! I tried my idea on the spot.

"It means," I said, "that there are too many people in this room. We confuse her, and frighten her. Take her into her bedroom, Herr Grosse; and only let the rest of us in, when you think right—one at a time."

Our excellent surgeon instantly seized on my idea, and made it his own.

"You are a phenix among womens," he said, paternally patting me on the shoulder. "Which is most perfectest, your advice or your Mayonnaise, I am at a loss to know." He turned to Lucilla, and raised her gently from her chair. "Come into your own rooms with me, my poor little Feench. I shall see if I dare take off your bandages to-day."

Lucilla clasped her hands entreatingly.

"You promised!" she said. "Oh, Herr Grosse, you promised to let me use my eyes to-day!"

"Answer me this!" retorted the German. "Did I know, when I promised, that I should find you all shaky-pale, as white as my shirts when he comes back from the wash?"

"I am quite myself again," she pleaded faintly. "I am quite fit to have the bandage taken off."

"What! you know better than I do? Which of us is surgeon-optic—you or me? No more of this. Come under my arms! Come into the odder rooms!"

He put her arm in his, and walked with her to the door. There, her variable humour suddenly changed. She rallied on the instant. Her face flushed; her courage came back. To my horror, she snatched her arm away from the surgeon, and refused to leave the room.

"No!" she said. "I am quite composed again; I claim your promise. Examine me here. I must and will have my first look at Oscar in this room."

(I was afraid—literally afraid—to turn my eyes Oscar's way. I glanced at Nugent instead. There was a devilish smile on his face that it nearly drove me mad to see.)

"You must and weel?" repeated Grosse. "Now, mind!" He took out his watch. "I give you one little minutes, to think in. If you don't come with me in that time, you shall find it is I who must and weel. Now!"

"Why do you object to go into your room?" I asked.

"Because I want everybody to see me," she answered. "How many of you are there here?"

"There are five of us. Mr. and Mrs. Finch; Mr. Nugent Dubourg; Oscar, and myself."

"I wish there were five hundred of you, instead of five?" she burst out.

"Why?"

"Because you would see me pick out Oscar from all the rest, the instant the bandage was off my eyes!"

Still holding to her own fatal conviction that the image in her mind of Oscar was the right one! For the second time, though I felt the longing in me to look at him, I shrank from doing it.

Herr Grosse put his watch back in his pocket.

"The minutes is passed," he said. "Will you come into the odder rooms? Will you understand that I cannot properly examine you before all these peoples? Say, my lofely Feench—Yes? or No?"

"No!" she cried obstinately, with a childish stamp of her foot. "I insist on showing everybody that I can pick out Oscar, the moment I open my eyes."

Herr Grosse buttoned his coat, settled his owlish spectacles firmly on his nose, and took up his hat. "Goot morning," he said. "I have nothing more to do with you or your eyes. Cure yourself, you little-spitfire-Feench. I am going back to London."

He opened the door. Even Lucilla was obliged to yield, when the surgeon in attendance on her threatened to throw up the case.

"You brute!" she said indignantly—and took his arm again.

Grosse indulged himself in his diabolical grin. "Wait till you are able to use your eyes, my lofe. Then you will see what a brutes I am!" With those words he took her out.

We were left in the sitting-room, to wait until the surgeon had decided whether he would, or would not, let Lucilla try her sight on that day.

While the others were, in their various ways, all suffering the same uneasy sense of expectation, I was as quiet in my mind as the baby now sleeping in his mother's arms. Thanks to Grosse's resolution to act on the hint that I had given to him, I had now made it impossible—even if the bandage was removed on that day—for Nugent to catch Lucilla's first look when she opened her eyes. Her betrothed husband might certainly, on such a special occasion as this, be admitted into her bed-chamber, in company with her father or with me. But the commonest sense of propriety would dictate the closing of the door on Nugent. In the sitting-room he must wait (if he still persisted in remaining at the rectory) until she was allowed to join him there. I privately resolved, having the control of the matter in my own hands, that this should not happen until Lucilla knew which of the twins was Nugent, and which was Oscar. A delicious inward glow of triumph diffused itself all through me. I resisted the strong temptation that I felt to discover how Nugent bore his defeat. If I had yielded to it, he would have seen in my face that I gloried in having outwitted him. I sat down, the picture of innocence, in the nearest chair, and crossed my hands on my lap, a composed and ladylike person, edifying to see.

The slow minutes followed each other—and still we waited the event in silence. Even Mr. Finch's tongue was, on this solitary occasion, a tongue incapable of pronouncing a single word. He sat by his wife at one end of the room. Oscar and I were at the other. Nugent stood by himself at one of the windows, deep in his own thoughts, plotting how he could pay me out.

Oscar was the first of the party who broke the silence. After looking all round the room, he suddenly addressed himself to me.

"Madame Pratolungo!" he exclaimed. "What has become of Jicks?"

I had completely forgotten the child. I too looked round the room, and satisfied myself that she had really disappeared. Mrs. Finch, observing our astonishment, timidly enlightened us. The maternal eye had seen Jicks slip out cunningly at Herr Grosse's heels. The child's object was plain enough. While there was any probability of the presence of more gingerbread in the surgeon's pocket, the wandering Arab of the family (as stealthy and as quick as a cat) was certain to keep within reach of her friend. Nobody who knew her could doubt that she had stolen into Lucilla's bed-chamber, under cover of Herr Grosse's ample coat-tails.

We had just accounted in this way for the mysterious absence of Jicks, when we heard the bed-chamber door opened, and the surgeon's voice calling for Zillah. In a minute more the nurse appeared, the bearer of a message from the next room.

We all surrounded her, with one and the same question to ask. What had Herr Grosse decided to do? The answer informed us that he had decided on forbidding Lucilla to try her eyes that day.

"Is she very much disappointed?" Oscar inquired anxiously.

"I can hardly say, sir. She isn't like herself. I never knew Miss Lucilla so quiet when she was crossed in her wishes, before. When the doctor called me into the room, she said: 'Go in, Zillah, and tell them.' Those words, sir, and no more."

"Did she express no wish to see me?" I inquired.

"No, ma'am. I took the liberty of asking her if she wished to see you. Miss Lucilla shook her head, and sat herself down on the sofa, and made the doctor sit by her. 'Leave us by ourselves.' Those were the last words she said to me, before I came in here."

Reverend Finch put the next question. The Pope of Dimchurch was himself again: the man of many words saw his chance of speaking once more.

"Good woman," said the rector with ponderous politeness, "step this way. I wish to address an inquiry to you. Did Miss Finch make any remark, in your hearing, indicating a desire to be comforted by My Ministrations—as one bearing the double relation towards her of pastor and parent?"