"As long ago as the first of this month," I replied.

He fell into thought. We ascended the next flight of stairs in silence. At the landing, he stopped me, and spoke again. My unanswered letter was still uppermost in his mind.

"Mrs. Finch loses everything that can be lost," he said. "Is it not likely—with her habits—that when she had written her answer, and wanted your letter to look at to put the address on it, your letter was like her handkerchief or her novel, or anything else—not to be found?"

So far, no doubt, this was quite in Mrs. Finch's character. I could see that—but my mind was too much pre-occupied to draw the inference that followed. Oscar's next words enlightened me.

"Have you tried the Poste-Restante?" he asked.

What could I possibly have been thinking of! Of course, she had lost my letter. Of course, the whole house would be upset in looking for it, and the rector would silence the uproar by ordering his wife to try the Poste-Restante. How strangely we had changed places! Instead of my clear head thinking for Oscar, here was Oscar's clear head thinking for Me. Is my stupidity quite incredible? Remember, if you please, what a weight of trouble and anxiety had lain on my mind while I was at Marseilles. Can one think of everything while one is afflicted, as I was? Not even such a clever person as You can do that. If, as the saying is, "Homer sometimes nods"—why not Madame Pratolungo?

"I never thought of the Poste-Restante," I said to Oscar. "If you don't mind going back a little way, shall we inquire at once?"

He was perfectly willing. We went downstairs again, and out into the street. On our way to the post-office, I seized my first opportunity of making Oscar give me some account of himself.

"I have satisfied your curiosity, to the best of my ability," I said, as we walked arm-in-arm through the streets. "Now suppose you satisfy mine. A report of your having been seen in a military hospital in Italy, is the only report of you which has reached me here. Of course, it is not true?"

"It is perfectly true."

"You, in a hospital, nursing wounded soldiers?"

"That is exactly what I have been doing."

No words could express my astonishment. I could only stop, and look at him.

"Was that the occupation which you had in view when you left England?" I asked.

"I had no object in leaving England," he answered, "but the object which I avowed to you. After what had happened, I owed it to Lucilla and I owed it to Nugent to go. I left England without caring where I went. The train to Lyons happened to be the first train that started on my arrival at Paris. I took the first train. At Lyons, I saw by chance an account in a French newspaper of the sufferings of some of the badly-wounded men, left still uncured after the battle of Solferino. I felt an impulse, in my own wretchedness, to help these other sufferers in their misery. On every other side of it, my life was wasted. The one worthy use to which I could put it was to employ myself in doing good; and here was good to be done, I managed to get the necessary letters of introduction at Turin. With the help of these, I made myself of some use (under the regular surgeons and dressers) in nursing the poor mutilated, crippled men; and I have helped a little afterwards, from my own resources, in starting them comfortably in new ways of life."

In those manly and simple words, he told me his story.

Once more I felt, what I had felt already, that there were hidden reserves of strength in the character of this innocent young fellow, which had utterly escaped my superficial observation of him. In choosing his vocation, he was, no doubt, only following the conventional modern course in such cases. Despair has its fashions, as well as dress. Ancient despair (especially of Oscar's sort) used to turn soldier, or go into a monastery. Modern despair turns nurse; binds up wounds, gives physic, and gets cured or not in that useful but nasty way. Oscar had certainly struck out nothing new for himself: he had only followed the fashion. Still, it implied, as I thought, both courage and resolution to have conquered the obstacles which he must have overcome, and to have held steadily on his course after he had once entered it. Having begun by quarreling with him, I was in a fair way to end by respecting him. Surely this man was worth preserving for Lucilla, after all!

"May I ask where you were going, when we met at the port?" I continued. "Have you left Italy because there were no more wounded soldiers to be cured?"

"There was no more work for me at the hospital to which I was attached," he said. "And there were certain obstacles in my way, as a stranger and a Protestant, among the poor and afflicted population outside the hospital. I might have overcome those obstacles, with little trouble, among a people so essentially good-tempered and courteous as the Italians, if I had tried. But it occurred to me that my first duty was to my own countrymen. The misery crying for relief in London, is misery not paralleled in any city of Italy. When you met me, I was on my way to London, to place my services at the disposal of any clergyman, in a poor neighborhood, who would accept such help as I can offer him." He paused a little—hesitated—and added in lower tones:—"That was one of my objects in returning to England. It is only honest to own to you that I had another motive besides."

"A motive connected with your brother and with Lucilla?" I suggested.

"Yes. Don't misinterpret me! I am not returning to England to retract what I said to Nugent. I still leave him free to plead his own cause with Lucilla in his own person. I am still resolved not to distress myself and distress them, by returning to Dimchurch. But I have a longing that nothing can subdue, to know how it has ended between them. Don't ask me to say more than that! In spite of the time that has passed, it breaks my heart to talk of Lucilla. I had looked forward to a meeting with you in London, and to hearing what I longed to hear, from your lips. Judge for yourself what my hopes were when I first saw your face; and forgive me if I felt my disappointment bitterly, when I found that you had really no news to tell, and when you spoke of Nugent as you did." He stopped, and pressed my arm earnestly. "Suppose I am right about Miss Finch's letter?" he added. "Suppose it should really be waiting for you at the post?"

"Well?"

"The letter may contain the news which I most want to hear."

I checked him there. "I am not sure of that," I answered. "I don't know what it is that you most want to hear."

I said those words with a purpose. What was the news he was longing for? In spite of all that he had told me, my instincts answered: News that Lucilla is still a single woman. My object in speaking as I had just spoken, was to tempt him into a reply which might confirm me in this opinion. He evaded the reply. Was that confirmation in itself? Yes—as I think!

"Will you tell me what there is in the letter?" he asked—passing, as you see, entirely over what I had just said to him.

"Yes—if you wish it," I answered: not over well pleased with his want of confidence in me.

"No matter what the letter contains?" he went on, evidently doubting me.

I said Yes, again—that one word, and no more.

"I suppose it would be asking too much," he persisted, "to ask you to let me read the letter myself?"

My temper, as you are well aware by this time, is not the temper of a saint. I drew my arm smartly out of his arm; and I surveyed him with, what poor Pratolungo used to call, "my Roman look."

"Mr. Oscar Dubourg! say, in plain words, that you distrust me."

He protested of course that he did nothing of the kind—without producing the slightest effect on me. Just run over in your mind the insults, worries, and anxieties which had assailed me, as the reward for my friendly interest in this man's welfare. Or, if that is too great an effort, be so good as to remember that Lucilla's farewell letter to me at Dimchurch, was now followed by the equally ungracious expression of Oscar's distrust—and this at a time when I had had serious trials of my own to sustain at my father's bedside. I think you will admit that a sweeter temper than mine might have not unnaturally turned a little sour under present circumstances.

I answered not a word to Oscar's protestations—I only searched vehemently in the pocket of my dress.

"Here," I said, opening my card-case, "is my address in this place; and here," I went on, producing the document, "is my passport, if they want it."

I forced the card and the passport into his hands. He took them in helpless astonishment.

"What am I to do with these?" he asked.

"Take them to the Poste-Restante. If there is a letter for me with the Dimchurch post-mark, I authorize you to open it. Read it before it comes into my hands—and then perhaps you will be satisfied?"

He declared that he would do nothing of the sort—and tried to force my documents back into my own possession.

"Please yourself," I said. "I have done with you and your affairs. Mrs. Finch's letter is of no earthly consequence to me. If it is at the Poste-Restante, I shall not trouble myself to ask for it. What concern have I with news about Lucilla? What does it matter to me whether she is married or not? I am going back to my father and my sisters. Decide for yourself whether you want Mrs. Finch's letter or not."

That settled it. He went his way with my documents to the post-office; and I went mine back to the lodging.

Arrived in my room, I still held to the resolution which I had expressed to Oscar in the street. Why should I leave my poor old father to go back to England, and mix myself up in Lucilla's affairs? After the manner in which she had taken her leave of me, had I any reasonable prospect of being civilly received? Oscar was on his way to England—let Oscar manage his own affairs; let them all three (Oscar, Nugent, Lucilla) fight it out together among themselves. What had I, Pratolungo's widow, to do with this trumpery family entanglement? Nothing! It was a warm day for the time of year—Pratolungo's widow, like a wise woman, determined to make herself comfortable. She unlocked her packed box; she removed her traveling costume, and put on her dressing-gown; she took a turn in the room—and, if you had come across her at that moment, I wouldn't have stood in your shoes for something, I can tell you!

(What do you think of my consistency by this time? How often have I changed my mind about Lucilla and Oscar? Reckon it up, from the time when I left Dimchurch. What a picture of perpetual self-contradiction I present—and how improbable it is that I should act in this illogical way! You never alter your mind under the influence of your temper or your circumstances. No: you are, what they call, a consistent character. And I? Oh, I am only a human being—and I feel painfully conscious that I have no business to be in a book.)

In about half an hour's time, the servant appeared with a little paper parcel for me. It had been left by a stranger with an English accent and a terrible face. He had announced his intention of calling a little later. The servant, a bouncing fat wench, trembled as she repeated the message, and asked if there was anything amiss between me and the man with the terrible face.

I opened the parcel. It contained my passport, and, sure enough, the letter from Mrs. Finch. Had he opened it? Yes! He had not been able to resist the temptation to read it. And more, he had written a line or two on it in pencil, thus:—"As soon as I am fit to see you, I will implore your pardon. I dare not trust myself in your presence yet. Read the letter, and you will understand why."

I opened the letter.

It was dated the fifth of September. I ran over the first few sentences carelessly enough. Thanks for my letter—congratulations on my father's prospect of recovery—information about baby's gums and the rector's last sermon—more information about somebody else, which Mrs. Finch felt quite sure would interest and delight me. What!!! "Mr. Oscar Dubourg has come back, and is now with Lucilla at Ramsgate."

I crumpled the letter up in my hand. Nugent had justified my worst anticipations of what he would do in my absence. What did the true Mr. Oscar Dubourg, reading that sentence at Marseilles, think of his brother now? We are all mortal—we are all wicked. It is monstrous, but it is true. I had a moment's triumph.

The wicked moment gone, I was good again—that is to say, I was ashamed of myself.

I smoothed out the letter, and looked eagerly for news of Lucilla's health. If the news was favorable, my letter committed to Miss Batchford's care must have been shown to Lucilla by this time; must have exposed Nugent's abominable personation of his brother; and must have thus preserved her for Oscar. In that case, all would be well again (and my darling herself would own it)—thanks to Me!

After telling me the news from Ramsgate, Mrs. Finch began to drift into, what you call, Twaddle. She had just discovered (exactly as Oscar had supposed) that she had lost my letter. She would keep her own letter back until the next day, on the chance of finding it. If she failed she must try Poste-Restante, at the suggestion (not of Mr. Finch—there I was wrong)—at the suggestion of Zillah, who had relatives in foreign parts, and had tried Poste-Restante in her case too. So Mrs. Finch driveled mildly on, in her large loose untidy handwriting, to the bottom of the third page.

I turned over. The handwriting suddenly grew untidier than ever; two great blots defaced the paper; the style became feebly hysterical. Good Heavens! what did I read when I made it out at last! See for yourselves; here are the words: "Some hours have passed—it is just tea-time—-oh, my dear friend, I can hardly hold the pen, I tremble so—would you believe it, Miss Batchford has arrived at the rectory—she brings the dreadful news that Lucilla has eloped with Oscar—we don't know why—we don't know where, except that they have gone away together privately—a letter from Oscar tells Miss Batchford as much as that, and no more—oh, pray come back as soon as you can—Mr. Finch washes his hands of it—and Miss Batchford has left the house again in a fury with him—I am in dreadful agitation, and I have given it Mr. Finch says to baby, who is screaming black in the face. Yours affectionately,

"AMELIA FINCH."



All the rages I had ever been in before in my life were as nothing compared with the rage that devoured me when I had read that fourth page of Mrs. Finch's letter. Nugent had got the better of me and my precautions! Nugent had robbed his brother of Lucilla, in the vilest manner, with perfect impunity! I cast all feminine restraints to the winds. I sat down with my legs anyhow, like a man. I rammed my hands into the pockets of my dressing-gown. Did I cry? A word in your ear—and let it go no farther. I swore.

How long the fit lasted, I don't know. I only remember that I was disturbed by a knock at my door.

I flung open the door in a fury—and confronted Oscar on the threshold.

There was a look in his face that instantly quieted me. There was a tone in his voice that brought the tears suddenly into my eyes.

"I must leave for England in two hours," he said. "Will you forgive me, Madame Pratolungo, before I go?"

Only those words! And yet—if you had seen him, if you had heard him, as he spoke them—you would have been ready as I was—not only to forgive him—but to go to the ends of the earth with him; and you would have told him so, as I did.

In two hours more, we were in the train, on our way to England.



CHAPTER THE FORTY-SEVENTH

On the Way to the End. First Stage

You will perhaps expect me to give some account of how Oscar bore the discovery of his brother's conduct.

I find it by no means easy to do this. Oscar baffled me.

The first words of any importance which he addressed to me were spoken on our way to the station. Rousing himself from his own thoughts, he said very earnestly——

"I want to know what conclusion you have drawn from Mrs. Finch's letter."

Naturally enough, under the circumstances, I tried to avoid answering him. He was not to be put off in that way.

"You will do me a favor," he went on, "if you will reply to my question. The letter has bred in me such a vile suspicion of my dear good brother, who never deceived me in his life, that I would rather believe I am out of my mind than believe in my own interpretation of it. Do you infer from what Mrs. Finch writes, that Nugent has presented himself to Lucilla under my name? Do you believe that he has persuaded her to leave her friends, under the impression that she has yielded to My entreaties, and trusted herself to My care?"

I answered in the fewest and plainest words, "That is what your brother has done."

A sudden change passed over him. My reply seemed to have set his last doubts at rest in an instant.

"That is what my brother has done," he repeated. "After all that I sacrificed to him—after all that I trusted to his honor—when I left England." He paused, and considered a little. "What does such a man deserve?" he went on; speaking to himself, in a low threatening tone that startled me.

"He deserves," I said, "what he will get when we reach England. You have only to show yourself to make him repent his wickedness to the last day of his life. Are exposure and defeat not punishment enough for such a man as Nugent?" I stopped, and waited for his answer.

He turned his face away from me, and said no more until we arrived at the station. There, he drew me aside for a moment out of hearing of the strangers about us.

"Why should I take you away from your father?" he asked abruptly. "I am behaving very selfishly—and I only see it now."

"Make your mind easy," I said. "If I had not met you to-day, I should have gone to England to-morrow for Lucilla's sake."

"But now you have met me," he persisted, "why shouldn't I spare you the journey? I could write and tell you every thing—without putting you to this fatigue and expense."

"If you say a word more," I answered, "I shall think you have some reason of your own for wishing to go to England by yourself."

He cast one quick suspicious look at me—and led the way back to the booking-office without uttering another word. I was not at all satisfied with him. I thought his conduct very strange.

In silence we took our tickets; in silence, we got into the railway-carriage. I attempted to say something encouraging, when we started. "Don't notice me," was all he replied. "You will be doing me a kindness, if you will let me bear it by myself." In my former experience of him, he had talked his way out of all his other troubles—he had clamorously demanded the expression of my sympathy with him. In this greatest trouble, he was like another being; I hardly knew him again! Were the hidden reserves in his nature (stirred up by another serious call on them) showing themselves once more on the surface as they had shown themselves already, on the fatal first day when Lucilla tried her sight? In that way I accounted for the mere superficial change in him, at the time. What was actually going on below the surface it defied my ingenuity even to guess. Perhaps I shall best describe the sort of vague apprehension which he aroused in me—after what had passed between us at the station—by saying that I would not for worlds have allowed him to go to England by himself.

Left as I now was to my own resources, I occupied the first hours of the journey, in considering what course it would be safest and best for us to take, on reaching England.

I decided, in the first place, that we ought to go straight to Dimchurch. If any tidings had been obtained of Lucilla, they would be sure to have received them at the rectory. Our route, after reaching Paris, must be therefore by way of Dieppe; thence across the Channel to Newhaven, near Brighton—and so to Dimchurch.

In the second place—assuming it to be always possible that we might see Lucilla at the rectory—the risk of abruptly presenting Oscar to her in his own proper person might, for all I knew to the contrary, be a very serious one. It would relieve us, as I thought, of a grave responsibility, if we warned Grosse of our arrival, and so enabled him to be present, if he thought it necessary, in the interests of Lucilla's health. I put this view (as also my plan for returning by way of Dieppe) to Oscar. He briefly consented to everything—he ungraciously left it all to me.

Accordingly, on our arrival at Lyons, having some time for refreshment at our disposal before we went on, I telegraphed to Mr. Finch at the rectory, and to Grosse in London; informing them (as well as I could calculate it) that, if we were lucky in catching trains and steamboats, Oscar and I might be in Dimchurch in good time, on the next night—that is to say, on the night of the eighteenth. In any case, they were to expect us at the earliest possible moment.

These difficulties disposed of, and a little store of refreshment for the night packed in my basket, we re-entered the train, for our long journey to Paris.

Among the new passengers who joined us at Lyons was a gentleman whose face was English, and whose dress was the dress of a clergyman. For the first time in my life, I hailed the appearance of a priest with a feeling of relief. The reason was this. From the moment when I had read Mrs. Finch's letter until now, a horrid doubt, which a priest was just the man to solve, had laid its leaden weight on my mind—and, I firmly believe, on Oscar's mind as well. Had time enough passed, since Lucilla had left Ramsgate, to allow of Nugent's marrying her, under his brother's name?

As the train rolled out of the station, I, the enemy of priests, began to make myself agreeable to this priest. He was young and shy—but I conquered him. Just as the other travelers were beginning (with the exception of Oscar) to compose themselves to sleep, I put my case to the clergyman. "A and B, sir, lady and gentleman, both of age, leave one place in England, and go to live in another place, on the fifth of this month—how soon, if you please, can they be lawfully married after that?"

"I presume you mean in church?" said the young clergyman.

"In church, of course." (To that extent I believed I might answer for Lucilla, without any fear of making a mistake.)

"They may be married by License," said the clergyman—"provided one of them continues to reside in that other place to which they traveled on the fifth—on the twenty-first, or (possibly) even the twentieth of this month."

"Not before?"

"Certainly not before."

It was then the night of the seventeenth. I gave my companion's hand a little squeeze in the dark. Here was a glimpse of encouragement to cheer us on the journey. Before the marriage could take place, we should be in England. "We have time before us," I whispered to Oscar. "We will save Lucilla yet."

"Shall we find Lucilla?" was all he whispered back.

I had forgotten that serious difficulty. No answer to Oscar's question could possibly present itself until we reached the rectory. Between this and then, there was nothing for it but to keep patience and to keep hope.

I refrain from encumbering this part of my narrative with any detailed account of the little accidents, lucky and unlucky, which alternately hastened or retarded our journey home. Let me only say that, before midnight on the eighteenth, Oscar and I drove up to the rectory gate.

Mr. Finch himself came out to receive us, with a lamp in his hand. He lifted his eyes (and his lamp) devotionally to the sky when he saw Oscar. The two first words he said, were:—

"Inscrutable Providence!"

"Have you found Lucilla?" I asked.

Mr. Finch—with his whole attention fixed on Oscar—wrung my hand mechanically, and said I was a "good creature;" much as he might have patted, and spoken to, Oscar's companion, if the companion had been a dog. I almost wished myself that animal for the moment—I should have had the privilege of biting Mr. Finch. Oscar impatiently repeated my question; the rector, at the time, officiously assisting him to descend from the carriage, and leaving me to get out as I could.

"Did you hear Madame Pratolungo?" Oscar asked. "Is Lucilla found?"

"Dear Oscar, we hope to find her, now you have come."

That answer revealed to me the secret of Mr. Finch's extraordinary politeness to his young friend. The last chance, as things were, of preventing Lucilla's marriage to a man who had squandered away every farthing of his money, was the chance of Oscar's arrival in England before the ceremony could take place. The measure of Oscar's importance to Mr. Finch was now, more literally than ever, the measure of Oscar's fortune.

I asked for news of Grosse as we went in. The rector actually found some comparatively high notes in his prodigious voice, to express his amazement at my audacity in speaking to him of anybody but Oscar.

"Oh, dear, dear me!" cried Mr. Finch, impatiently conceding to me one precious moment of his attention. "Don't bother about Grosse! Grosse is ill in London. There is a note for you from Grosse.—Take care of the door-step, dear Oscar," he went on, in his deepest and gravest bass notes. "Mrs. Finch is so anxious to see you. We have both looked forward to your arrival with such eager hope—such impatient affection, so to speak. Let me put down your hat. Ah! how you must have suffered! Share my trust in an all-wise Providence, and meet this trial with cheerful submission as I do. All is not lost yet. Bear up! bear up!" He threw open the parlor door. "Mrs. Finch! compose yourself. Our dear adopted son. Our afflicted Oscar!"

Is it necessary to say what Mrs. Finch was about, and how Mrs. Finch looked?

There were the three unchangeable institutions—the novel, the baby, and the missing pocket-handkerchief There was the gaudy jacket over the long trailing dressing-gown—and the damp lady inside them, damp as ever! Receiving Oscar with a mouth drawn down at the corners, and a head that shook sadly in sympathy with him, Mrs. Finch's face underwent a most extraordinary transformation when she turned my way next. To my astonishment, her dim eyes actually sparkled; a broad smile of irrepressible contentment showed itself cunningly to me, in place of the dismal expression which had welcomed Oscar. Holding up the baby in triumph, the lady of the rectory whispered these words in my ear:—"What do you think he has done since you have been away?"

"I really don't know," I answered.

"He has cut two teeth! Put your finger in and feel."

Others might bewail the family misfortune. The family triumph filled the secret mind of Mrs. Finch, to the exclusion of every other earthly consideration. I put my finger in as instructed, and got instantly bitten by the ferocious baby. But for a new outburst of the rector's voice at the moment, Mrs. Finch (if I am any judge of physiognomy) must have certainly relieved herself by a scream of delight. As it was, she opened her mouth; and (having lost her handkerchief as already stated) retired into a corner, and gagged herself with the baby.

In the meantime, Mr. Finch had produced from a cupboard near the fireplace, two letters. The first he threw down impatiently on the table. "Oh, dear, dear! what a nuisance other people's letters are!" The second he handled with extraordinary care; offering it to Oscar with a heavy sigh, and with eyes that turned up martyr-like to the ceiling. "Rouse yourself, and read it," said Mr. Finch in his most pathetic pulpit tones. "I would have spared you, Oscar, if I could. All our hopes depend, dear boy, on what you can say to guide us when you have read those lines."

Oscar took the enclosure out of the envelope—ran over the first words—glanced at the signature—and, with a look of mingled rage and horror, threw the letter on the floor.

"Don't ask me to read it!" he cried, in the first burst of passion which had escaped him yet. "If I read it, I shall kill him when we meet." He dropped into a chair, and hid his face in his hands. "Oh, Nugent! Nugent! Nugent!" he moaned to himself, with a cry that was dreadful to hear.

It was no time for standing on ceremony. I picked up the letter, and looked at it without asking leave. It proved to be the letter from Nugent (already inserted at the close of Lucilla's Journal), informing Miss Batchford of her niece's flight from Ramsgate, and signed in Oscar's name. The only words which it is necessary to repeat here, are these:—"She accompanies me, at my express request, to the house of a married lady who is a relative of mine, and under whose care she will remain, until the time arrives for our marriage."

Those lines instantly lightened my heart of the burden that had oppressed it on the journey. Nugent's married relative was Oscar's married relative too. Oscar had only to tell us where the lady lived—and Lucilla would be found!

I stopped Mr. Finch, in the act of maddening Oscar by administering pastoral consolation to him.

"Leave it to me," I said, showing him the letter. "I know what you want."

The rector stared at me indignantly. I turned to Mrs. Finch.

"We have had a weary journey," I went on. "Oscar is not so well used to traveling as I am. Where is his room?"

Mrs. Finch rose to show the way. Her husband opened his lips to interfere.

"Leave it to me," I repeated. "I understand him; and you don't."

For once in his life, the Pope of Dimchurch was reduced to silence. His amazement at my audacity defied even his powers of expression. I took Oscar's arm, and said, "You are worn out. Go to your room. I will make you something warm and bring it up to you myself in a few minutes." He neither looked at me nor answered me—he yielded silently and followed Mrs. Finch. I took from the sideboard, on which supper was waiting, the materials I wanted; set the kettle boiling; made my renovating mixture; and advanced to the door with it—followed from first to last, move where I might, by the staring and scandalized eyes of Mr. Finch. The moment in which I opened the door was also the moment in which the rector recovered himself. "Permit me to inquire, Madame Pratolungo," he said with his loftiest emphasis, "in what capacity are You here?"

"In the capacity of Oscar's friend," I answered. "You will get rid of us both to-morrow." I banged the door behind me, and went up-stairs. If I had been Mr. Finch's wife, I believe I should have ended in making quite an agreeable man of him.

Mrs. Finch met me in the passage on the first floor, and pointed out Oscar's room. I found him walking backwards and forwards restlessly. The first words he said alluded to his brother's letter. I had arranged not to disturb him by any reference to that painful matter until the next morning; and I tried to change the topic. It was useless. There was an anxiety in his mind which was not to be dismissed at will. He insisted on my instantly setting that anxiety at rest.

"I don't want to see the letter," he said. "I only want to know all that it says about Lucilla."

"All that it says may be summed up in this. Lucilla is perfectly safe."

He caught me by the arm, and looked me searchingly in the face.

"Where?" he asked. "With him?"

"With a married lady who is a relative of his."

He dropped my arm, and considered for a moment.

"My cousin at Sydenham!" he exclaimed.

"Do you know the house?"

"Perfectly well."

"We will go there to-morrow. Let that content you for tonight. Get to rest."

I gave him my hand. He took it mechanically—absorbed in his own thoughts.

"Didn't I say something foolish down stairs?" he asked, putting the question suddenly, with an odd suspicious look at me.

"You were quite worn out," I said, consolingly. "Nobody noticed it."

"You are sure of that?"

"Quite sure. Good night."

I left the room, feeling much as I had felt at the station at Marseilles. I was not satisfied with him. I thought his conduct very strange.



On returning to the parlor, I found nobody there but Mrs. Finch. The rector's offended dignity had left the rector no honorable alternative but to withdraw to his own room. I ate my supper in peace; and Mrs. Finch (rocking the cradle with her foot) chattered away to her heart's content about all that had happened in my absence.

I gathered, here and there, from what she said, some particulars worth mentioning.

The new disagreement between Mr. Finch and Miss Batchford, which had driven the old lady out of the rectory almost as soon as she set foot in it, had originated in Mr. Finch's exasperating composure when he heard of his daughter's flight. He supposed, of course, that Lucilla had left Ramsgate with Oscar—whose signed settlements on his future wife were safe in Mr. Finch's possession. It was only when Miss Batchford had communicated with Grosse, and when the discovery followed which revealed the penniless Nugent as the man who had eloped with Lucilla, that Mr. Finch's parental anxiety (seeing no money likely to come of it) became roused to action. He, Miss Batchford, and Grosse, had all, in their various ways, done their best to trace the fugitives—and had all alike been baffled by the impossibility of discovering the residence of the lady mentioned in Nugent's letter. My telegram, announcing my return to England with Oscar, had inspired them with their first hope of being able to interfere, and stop the marriage before it was too late.

The occurrence of Grosse's name in Mrs. Finch's rambling narrative, recalled to my memory what the rector had told me at the garden gate. I had not yet received the letter which the German had sent to wait my arrival at Dimchurch. After a short search, we found it—where it had been contemptuously thrown by Mr. Finch—on the parlor table.

A few lines comprised the whole letter. Grosse informed me that he had so fretted himself about Lucilla, that he had been attacked by "a visitation of gouts." It was impossible to move his "foots" without instantly plunging into the torture of the infernal regions. "If it is you, my goot dear, who are going to find her," he concluded, "come to me first in London. I have something most dismal-serious to say to you about our poor little Feench's eyes."

No words can tell how that last sentence startled and grieved me. Mrs. Finch increased my anxiety and alarm by repeating what she had heard Miss Batchford say, during her brief visit to the rectory, on the subject of Lucilla's sight. Grosse had been seriously dissatisfied with the state of his patient's eyes, when he had seen them as long ago as the fourth of the month; and, on the morning of the next day, the servant had reported Lucilla as being hardly able to distinguish objects in the view from the window of her room. Later on the same day, she had secretly left Ramsgate; and Grosse's letter proved that she had not been near her surgical attendant since.

Weary as I was after the journey, this miserable news kept me waking long after I had gone to my bed. The next morning, I was up with the servants—impatient to start for London, by the first train.



CHAPTER THE FORTY-EIGHTH

On the Way to the End. Second Stage

EARLY riser as I was, I found that Oscar had risen earlier still. He had left the rectory and had disturbed Mr. Gootheridge's morning slumbers by an application at the inn for the key of Browndown.

On his return to the rectory, he merely said that he had been to see after various things belonging to him, which were still left in the empty house. His look and manner as he gave us this brief explanation were, to my mind, more unsatisfactory than ever. I made no remark; and, observing that his loose traveling coat was buttoned awry over the breast, I set it right for him. My hand, as I did this, touched his breast-pocket. He started back directly—as if there was something in the pocket which he did not wish me to feel. Was it something he had brought from Browndown?

We got away—encumbered by Mr. Finch, who insisted on attaching himself to Oscar—by the first express train, which took us straight to London. Comparison of time-tables, on reaching the terminus, showed that I had leisure to spare for a brief visit to Grosse, before we again took the railway back to Sydenham. Having decided not to mention the bad news about Lucilla's sight to Oscar, until I had seen the German first, I made the best excuse that suggested itself, and drove away—leaving the two gentlemen in the waiting-room at the station.

I found Grosse confined to his easy-chair, with his gouty foot enveloped in cool cabbage-leaves. Between pain and anxiety, his eyes were wilder, his broken English was more grotesque than ever. When I appeared at the door of his room and said good morning—in the frenzy of his impatience he shook his fist at me.

"Good morning go-damn!" he roared out, "Where? where? where is Feench?"

I told him where we believed Lucilla to be. Grosse turned his head, and shook his fist at a bottle on the chimney-piece next.

"Get that bottles on the chimney," he said. "And the eye-baths by the side of him. Don't stop with your talky-talky-chatterations here. Go! Save her eyes. Look! You do this. You throw her head back—soh!" He illustrated the position so forcibly with his own head that he shook his gouty foot, and screamed with the pain of it. He went on nevertheless, glaring frightfully through his spectacles; gnashing his mustache fiercely between his teeth. "Throw her head back. Fill the eye-baths; turn him upsides-down over her open eyes. Drown them turn-turn-about in my mixtures. Drown them, I say, one-down-todder-come-on, and if she screech never mind it. Then bring her to me. For the lofe of Gott, bring her to me. If you tie her hands and foots, bring her to me. What is the womans stopping for? Go! go! go!"

"I want to ask you a question about Oscar," I said, "before I go."

He seized the pillow which supported his head—evidently intending to expedite my departure by throwing it at me. I produced the railway time-table as the best defensive weapon at my command. "Look at it for yourself," I said; "and you will see that I must wait at the station, if I don't wait here."

With some difficulty, I satisfied him that it was impossible to leave London for Sydenham before a certain hour, and that I had at least ten minutes to spare which might be just as well passed in consulting him. He closed his glaring eyes, and laid his head back on the chair, thoroughly exhausted with his own outbreak of excitement. "No matter how things goes," he said, "a womans must wag her tongue. Goot. Wag yours."

"I am placed in a very difficult position," I began. "Oscar is going with me to Lucilla. I shall of course take care, in the first place, that he and Nugent do not meet, unless I am present at the interview. But I am not equally sure of what I ought to do in the case of Lucilla. Must I keep them apart until I have first prepared her to see Oscar?"

"Let her see the devil himself if you like," growled Grosse, "so long as you bring her here afterwards-directly to me. You will do the bettermost thing, if you prepare Oscar. She wants no preparations! She is enough disappointed in him as it is!"

"Disappointed in him!" I repeated. "I don't understand you."

He settled himself wearily in his chair, and referred, in a softened and saddened tone, to that private conversation of his with Lucilla, at Ramsgate, which has already been reported in the Journal. I was now informed, for the first time, of those changes in her sensations and in her ways of thinking which had so keenly vexed and mortified her. I heard of the ominous absence of the old thrill of pleasure, when Nugent took her hand on meeting her at the seaside—I heard how bitterly his personal appearance had disappointed her (when she had seen his features in detail) by comparison with the charming ideal picture which she had formed of her lover in the days of her blindness: those happier days, as she had called them, when she was Poor Miss Finch.

"Surely," I said, "all the old feelings will come back to her when she sees Oscar?"

"They will never come back to her—no, not if she sees fifty Oscars!"

He was beginning to frighten me, or to irritate me—I can hardly say which. I only know that I persisted in disputing with him. "When she sees the true man," I went on, "do you mean to say she will feel the same disappointment——?"

I could get no farther than that. He cut me short there, without ceremony.

"You foolish womans!" he interposed, "she will feel more than the same. I have told you already it was one enormous disappointments to her when she saw the handsome brodder with the fair complexions. Ask your own self what it will be when she sees the ugly brodder with the blue face. I tell you this!—she will think your true man the worst impostor of the two."

There I indignantly contradicted him.

"His face may be a disappointment to her," I said—"I own that. But there it will end. Her hand will tell her, when he takes it, that there is no impostor deceiving her this time."

"Her hand will tell her nothing—no more than yours. I had not so much hard hearts in me as to say that to her, when she asked me. I say it to you. Hold your tongue and listen. All those thrill-tingles that she once had when he touched her, belong to anodder time—the time gone-by when her sight was in her fingers and not in her eyes. With those fine-superfine-feelings of the days when she was blind, she pays now for her grand new privilege of opening her eyes on the world. (And worth the price too!) Do you understand yet? It is a sort of swop-bargain between Nature and this poor girls of ours. I take away your eyes—I give you your fine touch. I give you your eyes—I take away your fine touch. Soh! that is plain. You see now."

I was too mortified and too miserable to answer him. Through all our later troubles, I had looked forward so confidently to Oscar's re-appearance as the one sufficient condition on which Lucilla's happiness would be certainly restored! What had become of my anticipations now? I sat silent; staring in stupid depression at the pattern of the carpet. Grosse took out his watch.

"Your ten-minutes-time has counted himself out," he said.

I neither moved nor heeded him. His ferocious eyes began to flame again behind his monstrous spectacles.

"Go-be-off-with-you!" he shouted at me as if I was deaf. "Her eyes! her eyes! While you stop chatterboxing here, her eyes are in danger. What with her frettings and her cryings and her damn-nonsense-lofe-business, I swear you my solemn oath her sight was in danger when I saw her a whole fortnight gone-by. Do you want my big pillow to fly bang at your head? You don't want him? Be-off-away with you then, or you will have him in one-two-three time! Be-off-away—and bring her back to me before night!"

I returned to the railway. Of all the women whom I passed in the crowded streets, I doubt if one had a heavier heart in her bosom that morning than mine.

To make matters worse still, my traveling companions (one in the refreshment-room, and one pacing the platform) received my account of my interview with Grosse in a manner which seriously disappointed and discouraged me. Mr. Finch's inhuman conceit treated my melancholy news of his daughter as a species of complimentary tribute to his own foresight.

"You remember, Madame Pratolungo, I took high ground in this matter from the first. I protested against the proceedings of the man Grosse, as involving a purely worldly interference with the ways of an inscrutable Providence. With what effect? My paternal influence was repudiated; my Moral Weight was, so to speak, set aside. And now you see the result. Take it to heart, dear friend. May it be a warning to you!" He sighed with ponderous complacency, and turned from me to the girl behind the counter. "I will take another cup of tea."

Oscar's reception of me, when I found him on the platform, and told him next of Lucilla's critical state, was more than discouraging. It is no exaggeration to say that he alarmed me. "Another item in the debt I owe to Nugent!" he said. Not a word of sympathy, not a word of sorrow. That vindictive answer, and nothing more.

We started for Sydenham.

From time to time, I looked at Oscar sitting opposite to me, to see if any change appeared in him as we drew nearer and nearer to the place in which Lucilla was now living. No! Still the same ominous silence, the same unnatural self-repression possessed him.

Except the momentary outbreak, when Mr. Finch had placed Nugent's letter in his hand on the previous evening, not the faintest token of what was really going on in his mind had escaped him since we had left Marseilles. He, who could weep over all his other griefs as easily and as spontaneously as a woman, had not shed a tear since the fatal day when he had discovered that his brother had played him false—that brother who had been the god of his idolatry, the sacred object of his gratitude and his love! When a man of Oscar's temperament becomes frozen up for days together in his own thoughts—when he keeps his own counsel; when he asks for no sympathy, and utters no complaint—the sign is a serious one. There are hidden forces gathering in him which will burst their way to the surface—for good or for evil—with an irresistible result. Watching Oscar attentively behind my veil, I felt the certain assurance that the part he would take in the terrible conflict of interests now awaiting us, would be a part which I should remember to the latest day of my life.

We reached Sydenham, and went to the nearest hotel.

On the railway—with other travelers in the carriage-it had been impossible to consult on the safest method of approaching Lucilla, in the first instance. That serious question now pressed for instant decision. We sat down to discuss it, in the room which we had hired at the hotel.



CHAPTER THE FORTY-NINTH

On the Way to the End. Third Stage

ON former occasions of doubt or difficulty, it had always been Oscar's habit to follow the opinions of others. On this occasion he was the first to speak, and to assert an opinion of his own.

"It seems needless to waste time in discussing our different views," he said. "There is only one thing to be done. I am the person principally concerned in this matter. Wait here, while I go to the house."

He spoke without any of his usual hesitation; he took up his hat without looking either at Mr. Finch or at me. I felt more and more convinced that the influence which Nugent's vile breach of confidence had exerted over Oscar's mind, was an influence which had made a dangerous man of him. Resolved to prevent him from leaving us, I insisted on his returning to his chair, and hearing what I had to say. At the same moment, Mr. Finch rose, and placed himself between Oscar and the door. Seeing this, I thought it might be wise if I kept my interference in reserve, and allowed the rector to speak first.

"Wait a moment, Oscar," said Mr. Finch, gravely. "You are forgetting Me."

Oscar waited doggedly, hat in hand.

Mr. Finch paused, evidently considering what words he should use before he spoke again. His respect for Oscar's pecuniary position was great; but his respect for himself—especially at the present crisis—was, if possible, greater still. In deference to the first sentiment he was as polite, and in deference to the second he was as positive, in phrasing his remonstrance, as a man could be. "Permit me to remind you, dear Oscar, that my claim to interfere, as Lucilla's father, is at least equal to yours," proceeded the rector. "In the hour of my daughter's need, it is my parental duty to be present. If you go to your cousin's house, my position imperatively requires that I should go too." Oscar's reception of this proposal confirmed the grave apprehensions with which he had inspired me. He flatly refused to have Mr. Finch for a companion.

"Excuse me," he answered shortly. "I wish to go to the house alone."

"Permit me to ask your reason," said the rector, still preserving his conciliatory manner.

"I wish to see my brother in private," Oscar replied, with his eyes on the ground.

Mr. Finch, still restraining himself, but still not moving from the door, looked at me. I hastened to interfere before there was any serious disagreement between them.

"I venture to think," I said, "that you are both wrong. Whether one of you goes, or both of you go, the result will be the same. The chances are a hundred to one, against your being admitted into the house."

They both turned on me together, and asked what I meant.

"You can't force your way in," I said. "You must do one of two things. You must either give your names to the servant at the door, or you must withhold your names. If you give them, you warn Nugent of what is coming—and he is not the man to let you into the house under those circumstances. If you take the other way, and keep your names concealed, you present yourselves as strangers. Is Nugent likely to be accessible to strangers? Would Lucilla, in her present position, consent to receive two men who are unknown to her? Take my word for it—you will not only gain nothing if you go to the house you will actually make it more difficult to communicate with Lucilla than it is already."

There was a moment's silence. Both the men felt that my objections were not easy to answer. Once more, Oscar took the lead.

"Do you propose to go?" he asked.

"No," I answered. "I propose to send a letter to Lucilla. A letter will find its way to her."

This again was unanswerable. Oscar inquired next what the purport of the letter was to be. I replied that I proposed to ask her to grant me a private interview—nothing more.

"Suppose Lucilla refuses?" said Mr. Finch.

"She will not refuse," I rejoined. "There was a little misunderstanding between us—I admit—at the time when I went abroad. I mean to refer frankly to that misunderstanding as my reason for writing. I shall put your daughter on her honor to give me an opportunity of setting things right between us. If I summon Lucilla to do an act of justice, I believe she will not refuse me."

(This, let me add in parenthesis, was the plan of action which I had formed on the way to Sydenham. I had only waited to mention it, until I heard what the two men proposed to do first.)

Oscar, standing hat in hand, glanced at Mr. Finch (also hat in hand) keeping obstinately near the door. If he persisted in carrying out his purpose of going alone to his cousin's house, the rector's face and manner expressed, with the politest plainness, the intention of following him. Oscar was placed between a clergyman and a woman, both equally determined to have their own way. Under those circumstances, there was no alternative—unless he wished to produce a public scandal—but to yield, or appear to yield, to one or the other of us. He selected me.

"If you succeed in seeing her," he asked, "what do you mean to do?"

"I mean either to bring her back with me here to her father and to you, or to make an appointment with her to see you both where she is now living," I replied.

Oscar—after another look at the immovable rector—rang the bell, and ordered writing materials.

"One more question," he said. "Assuming that Lucilla receives you at the house, do you intend to see——?" He stopped; his eyes shrank from meeting mine. "Do you intend to see anybody else?" he resumed: still evading the plain utterance of his brother's name.

"I intend to see nobody but Lucilla," I answered. "It is no business of mine to interfere between you and your brother." (Heaven forgive me for speaking in that way to him, while I had the firm resolution to interfere between them in my mind all the time!)

"Write your letter," he said, "on condition that I see the reply."

"It is needless, I presume, for me to make the same stipulation?" added the rector. "In my parental capacity—"

I recognized his parental capacity, before he could say any more. "You shall both see the reply," I said—and sat down to my letter; writing merely what I had told them I should write: "Dear Lucilla, I have just returned from the Continent. For the sake of justice, and for the sake of old times, let me see you immediately—without mentioning our appointment to anybody. I pledge myself to satisfy you, in five minutes, that I have never been unworthy of your affection and your confidence. The bearer waits for your reply."

I handed those lines to the two gentlemen to read. Mr. Finch made no remark—he was palpably dissatisfied at the secondary position which he occupied. Oscar said, "I see no objection to the letter. I will do nothing until I have read the answer." With those words, he dictated to me his cousin's address. I gave the letter myself to one of the servants at the hotel.

"Is it far from here?" I asked.

"Barely ten minutes' walk, ma'am."

"You understand that you are to wait for an answer?"

"Yes, ma'am."

He went out. As well as I can remember, an interval of at least half an hour passed before his return. You will form some idea of the terrible oppression of suspense that now laid its slowly-torturing weight on all three of us, when I tell you that not one word was spoken in the room from the time when the servant went out, to the time when the servant came in again.

When the man returned he had a letter in his hand!

My fingers shook so that I could hardly open it. Before I had read a word, the sight of the writing struck a sudden chill through me. The body of the note was written by the hand of a stranger! And the signature at the end was traced in the large straggling childish characters which I remembered so well, when Lucilla had written her first letter to Oscar in the days when she was blind!

The note was expressed in these strange words:—"I cannot receive you here; but I can, and will, come to you at your hotel if you will wait for me. I am not able to appoint a time. I can only promise to watch for my first opportunity, and to take advantage of it instantly—for your sake and for mine."

But one interpretation could be placed on such language as this. Lucilla was not a free agent. Both Oscar and the rector were now obliged to acknowledge that my view of the case had been the correct one. If it was impossible for me to be received into the house, how doubly impossible would it be for the men to gain admission! Oscar, after reading the note, withdrew to the further end of the room; keeping his thoughts to himself. Mr. Finch decided on stepping out of his secondary position by forthwith taking a course of his own.

"Am I to infer," he began, "that it is really useless for me to attempt to see my own child?"

"Her letter speaks for itself," I replied. "If you attempt to see her, you will probably be the means of preventing your daughter from coming here."

"In my parental capacity," continued Mr. Finch, "it is impossible for me to remain passive. As a brother-clergyman, I have, I conceive, a claim on the rector of the parish. It is quite likely that notice may have been already given of this fraudulent marriage. In that case, it is not only my duty to myself and my child—it is my duty to the Church, to confer with my reverend colleague. I go to confer with him." He strutted to the door, and added, "If Lucilla arrives in my absence, I invest you with my authority, Madame Pratolungo, to detain her until my return." With that parting charge to me, he walked out.

I looked at Oscar. He came slowly towards me from the other end of the room.

"You will wait here, of course?" he said.

"Of course. And you?"

"I shall go out for a little while."

"For any particular purpose?"

"No. To get through the time. I am weary of waiting."

I felt positively assured, from the manner in which he answered me, that he was going—now he had got rid of Mr. Finch—straight to his cousin's house.

"You forget," I said, "that Lucilla may come here while you are out. Your presence in the room, or in the room next to this, may be of the greatest importance, when I tell her what your brother has done. Suppose she refuses to believe me? What am I to do if I have not got you to appeal to? In your own interests, as well as in Lucilla's, I request you to remain here with me till she comes."

Putting it on that ground only, I waited to see what he would do. After a certain hesitation, he answered with a sullen assumption of indifference, "Just as you please!"—and walked away again towards the other end of the room. As he turned his back on me, I heard him say to himself, "It's only waiting a little longer!"

"Waiting for what?" I asked.

He looked round at me over his shoulder.

"Patience for the present!" he answered. "You will hear soon enough." For the moment, I said no more to him. The tone in which he had replied warned me that it would be useless.

After an interval—how long an interval I cannot well say—I heard the sound of women's dresses in the passage outside.

The instant after, there was a knock at the door.

I signed to Oscar to open a second door, close by him at the lower end of the room, and (for the moment at least) to keep out of sight. Then I answered the knock, and said as steadily as I could, "Come in."

A woman unknown to me entered, dressed like a respectable servant. She came in leading Lucilla by the hand. My first look at my darling told me the horrible truth. As I had seen her in the corridor at the rectory on the first day we met, so I now saw her once more. Again, the sightless eyes turned on me, insensibly reflecting the light that fell on them. Blind! Oh, God, after a few brief weeks of sight, blind again!

In that miserable discovery, I forgot everything else. I flew to her, and caught her in my arms. I cast one look at her pale, wasted face—and burst out crying on her bosom.

She held my head gently with one hand, and waited with the patience of an angel until that first outbreak of my grief had exhausted itself. "Don't cry about my blindness," said the soft, sweet voice that I knew so well. "The days when I had my sight have been the unhappiest days of my life. If I look as if I had been fretting, don't think it is about my eyes." She paused, and sighed bitterly. "I may tell you," she went on in a whisper. "It's a relief, it's a consolation, to tell you. I am fretting about my marriage."

Those words roused me. I lifted my head, and kissed her. "I have come back to comfort you," I said: "and I have behaved like a fool."

She smiled faintly. "How like you," she exclaimed, "to say that!" She tapped my cheek with her fingers in the old familiar way. The repetition of that little trifling action almost broke my heart. I nearly choked myself in forcing back the stupid cowardly useless tears that tried to burst from me again. "Come!" she said. "No more crying! Let us sit down and talk as if we were at Dimchurch."

I took her to the sofa: we sat side by side. She put her arm round my waist, and laid her head on my shoulder. Again the faint smile flickered like a dying light on her lovely face; wan and wasted, yet still beautiful—still the Virgin's face in Raphael's picture. "We are a strange pair," she said, with a momentary flash of her old irresistible humour. "You are my bitterest enemy, and you burst out crying over me the moment we meet. I have been shockingly treated by you—and I have got my arm round your waist and my head on your shoulder, and I wouldn't let go of you for the world!" Her face saddened again; her voice suddenly altered its tone. "Tell me," she went on, "how is it that appearances were so terribly against you? Oscar satisfied me, at Ramsgate, that I ought to give you up, that I ought never to see you again. I took his view—there is no denying it, my dear—I agreed with him in detesting you, for a little while. But, when the blindness came back, I could keep it up no longer. Little by little, as the light died out, my heart would turn to you again. When I heard your letter read, when I knew that you were near me—it was just like the old times; I was mad to see you. And here I am—satisfied, before you explain it to me, that you have been the victim of some terrible mistake."

I tried, in grateful acknowledgment of those generous words, to enter on my justification there and then. It was impossible. I could think of nothing, I could speak of nothing, but the dreadful discovery of her blindness.

"Give me a few minutes," I said, "and you shall hear it all. I can't talk of myself, yet—I can only talk of you. Oh, Lucilla, why did you keep away from Grosse? Come with me to him to-day. Let him try what he can do. At once, my love—before it is too late!"

"It is too late," she said. "I have been to another oculist—a stranger. He said, what Mr. Sebright said: he doubted if there was ever any chance for me: he thought the operation ought never to have been performed."

"Why did you go to a stranger?" I asked. "Why did you give up Grosse!"

"You must ask Oscar," she answered. "It was at his desire that I kept away from Grosse."

Hearing this, I penetrated for myself the motive which had actuated Nugent—as I afterwards found it indicated in the Journal. If he had let Lucilla go to Grosse, our good German might have noticed that her position was preying on her mind, and might have seen his reasons for exposing the deception that Nugent was practicing on her. For the rest, I still persisted in entreating Lucilla to go back with me to our old friend.

"Remember our conversation on this very subject," she rejoined, shaking her head decisively. "I mean at the time when the operation was going to be performed. I told you I was used to being blind. I said I only wanted to recover my sight, to see Oscar. And when I did see him—what happened? The disappointment was so dreadful, I wished myself blind again. Don't start! don't cry out as if you were shocked! I mean what I say. You people who can see, attach such an absurd importance to your eyes! Don't you recollect my saying that, when we last talked about it?"

I recollected perfectly. She had said those words. She had declared that she had never honestly envied any of us the use of our eyes. She had even reviled our eyes; comparing them contemptuously with her touch; deriding them as deceivers who were constantly leading us wrong. I acknowledged all this—without being in the least reconciled to the catastrophe that had happened. If she would only have listened to me, I should still have gone on obstinately pleading with her. But she flatly refused to listen. "We have very little time to spare," she said. "Let us talk of something more interesting before I am obliged to leave you."

"Obliged to leave me?" I repeated. "Are you not your own mistress?"

Her face clouded over; her manner became embarrassed.

"I cannot honestly tell you that I am a prisoner," she answered. "I can only say I am watched. When Oscar is away from me, Oscar's cousin—a sly, suspicious, false woman—always contrives to put herself in his place. I heard her say to her husband that she believed I should break my marriage engagement unless I was closely looked after. I don't know what I should do, but for one of the servants in the house, who is an excellent creature—who sympathizes with me, and helps me." She stopped, and lifted her head inquiringly. "Where is the servant?" she asked.

I had forgotten the woman who had brought her into the room. She must have delicately left us together after leading Lucilla in. When I looked up, she was not to be seen.

"The servant is no doubt waiting down-stairs," I said. "Go on."

"But for that good creature," Lucilla resumed, "I should never have got here. She brought me your letter, and read it to me, and wrote my reply. I arranged with her to slip out at the first opportunity. One chance was in our favor—we had only the cousin to keep an eye on us. Oscar was not in the house."

She suddenly checked herself at the last word. A slight sound at the lower end of the room, which had passed unnoticed by me, had caught her delicate ear, "What is that noise?" she asked. "Anybody in the room with us?"

I looked up once more. While she was talking of the false Oscar, the true Oscar was standing listening to her, at the other end of the room.

When he discovered that I was looking at him, he entreated me by a gesture not to betray his presence. He had evidently heard what we had been saying to each other, before I detected him—for he touched his eyes, and lifted his hands pityingly in allusion to Lucilla's blindness. Whatever his mood might be, that melancholy discovery must surely have affected him—Lucilla's influence over him now, could only be an influence for good. I signed to him to remain—and told Lucilla that there was nothing to be alarmed about. She went on.

"Oscar left us for London early this morning," she said. "Can you guess what he has gone for? He has gone to get the Marriage License—he has given notice of the marriage at the church. My last hope is in you. In spite of everything that I can say to him, he has fixed the day for the twenty-first—in two days more! I have done all I could to put it off; I have insisted on every possible delay. Oh, if you knew——!" Her rising agitation stifled her utterance at the moment. "I mustn't waste the precious minutes; I must get back before Oscar returns," she went on, rallying again. "Oh, my old friend, you are never at a loss; you always know what to do! Find me some way of putting off my marriage. Suggest something which will take them by surprise, and force them to give me time!"

I looked towards the lower end of the room. Listening in breathless interest, Oscar had noiselessly advanced half-way towards us. At a sign from me, he checked himself and came no farther.

"Do you really mean, Lucilla, that you no longer love him?" I said.

"I can tell you nothing about it," she answered—"except that some dreadful change has come over me. While I had my sight, I could partly account for it—I believed that the new sense had made a new being of me. But now I have lost my sight again—now I am once more what I have been all my life—still the same horrible insensibility possesses me. I have so little feeling for him, that I sometimes find it hard to persuade myself that he really is Oscar. You know how I used to adore him. You know how enchanted I should once have been to marry him. Think of what I must suffer, feeling towards him as I feel now!"

I looked up again. Oscar had stolen nearer; I could see his face plainly. The good influence of Lucilla was beginning to do its good work! I saw the tears rising in his eyes; I saw love and pity taking the place of hatred and revenge. The Oscar of my old recollections was standing before me once more!

"I don't want to go away," Lucilla went on; "I don't want to leave him. All I ask for, is a little more time. Time must help me to get back again to my old self. My blind days have been the days of my whole life. Can a few weeks of sight have deprived me of the feelings which have been growing in me for years? I won't believe it! I can find my way about the house; I can tell things by my touch; I can do all that I did in my blindness, just as well as ever, now I am blind again. The feeling for him will come back to me like the rest. Only give me time! only give me time!"

At the last word, she started to her feet in sudden alarm. "There is some one in the room," she said. "Some one who is crying! Who is it?"

Oscar was close to us. The tears were falling fast over his cheeks—the one faint sobbing breath which had escaped him had caught my ear as well as Lucilla's. I took his hand in one of my hands; and I took Lucilla's hand in the other. For good or for evil, the result rested with God's mercy. The time had come.

"Who is it?" Lucilla repeated impatiently.

"Try if you can tell, my love, without asking me."

With those words, I put her hand in Oscar's hand—and stood close, watching her face.

For one awful moment, when she first felt the familiar touch, the blood left her cheeks. Her blind eyes dilated fearfully. She stood petrified. Then, with a long low cry—a cry of breathless rapture—she flung her arms passionately round his neck. The life flowed back into her face; her lovely smile just trembled on her parted lips; her breath came faint and quick and fluttering. In soft tones of ecstasy, with her lips on his cheek, she murmured the delicious words:

"Oh, Oscar! I know you once more!"



CHAPTER THE FIFTIETH

The End of the Journey

A LITTLE interval of time elapsed.

Her first exquisite sense of the recognition by touch had passed away. Her mind had recovered its balance. She separated herself from Oscar, and turned to me, with the one inevitable question which I knew must follow the joining of their hands.

"What does it mean?"

The exposure of Nugent's perfidy; the revelation of the fatal secret of Oscar's face; and, last not least, the defence of my own conduct towards her, were all comprehended in the answer for which that question called. As carefully, as delicately, as mercifully as I could, I disclosed to her the whole truth. How the shock affected her, she did not tell me at the time, and has never told me since. With her hand in Oscar's hand, with her face hidden on Oscar's breast, she listened; not once interrupting me, from first to last, by so much as a single word. Now and then, I saw her tremble; now and then I heard her sigh heavily. That was all. It was only when I had ended—it was only after a long interval during which Oscar and I watched her in speechless anxiety—that she slowly lifted her head and broke the silence.

"Thank God," we heard her say to herself fervently—"Thank God, I am blind."

Those were her first words. They filled me with horror. I cried out to her to recall them.

She quietly laid her head back on Oscar's breast.

"Why should I recall them?" she asked. "Do you think I wish to see him disfigured as he is now? No! I wish to see him—and I do see him!—as my fancy drew his picture in the first days of our love. My blindness is my blessing. It has given me back my old delightful sensation when I touch him; it keeps my own beloved image of him—the one image I care for—unchanged and unchangeable. You will persist in thinking that my happiness depends on my sight. I look back with horror at what I suffered when I had my sight—my one effort is to forget that miserable time. Oh, how little you know of me! Oh, what a shock it would be to me, if I saw him as you see him! Try to understand me, and you won't talk of my loss—you will talk of my gain."

"Your gain?" I repeated. "What have you gained?"

"Happiness," she answered. "My life lives in my love. And my love lives in my blindness."

There was the story of her whole existence—told in two words!

If you had seen her radiant face as she raised it again in the excitement of speaking; if you had remembered (as I remembered) what her surgeon had said of the penalty which she must inevitably pay for the recovery of her sight—how would you have answered her? It is barely possible, perhaps, that you might have done what I did. That is to say: You might have modestly admitted that she knew what the conditions of her happiness were better than you—and you might not have answered her at all!

I left them to talk together, and took a turn in the room, considering with myself what we were to do next.

It was not easy to say. The barren information which I had received from my darling was all the information that I possessed. Nugent had unflinchingly carried his cruel deception to its end. He had falsely given notice of his marriage at the church, in his brother's name; and he was now in London, falsely obtaining his Marriage License, in his brother's name also. So much I knew of his proceedings—and no more.

While I was still pondering, Lucilla cut the Gordian knot.

"Why are we stopping here?" she asked. "Let us go—and never return to this hateful place again!"

As she rose to her feet, we were startled by a soft knock at the door.

I answered the knock. The woman who had brought Lucilla to the hotel appeared once more. She seemed to be afraid to venture far from the door. Standing just inside the room, she looked nervously at Lucilla, and said, "Can I speak to you, Miss?"

"You can say anything you like, before this lady and gentleman," Lucilla answered. "What is it?"

"I'm afraid we have been followed, Miss."

"Followed? By whom?"

"By the lady's maid. I saw her, a little while since, looking up at the hotel—and then she went back in a hurry on the way to the house—and that's not the worse of it, Miss."

"What else has happened?"

"We have made a mistake about the railway," said the woman. "There's a train from London that we didn't notice in the timetable. They tell me down-stairs it came in more than a quarter of an hour ago. Please to come back, Miss—or I fear we shall be found out."

"You can go back at once, Jane," said Lucilla.

"By myself?"

"Yes. Thank you for bringing me here—here I remain."

She had barely taken her seat again between Oscar and me, before the door was softly opened from the outside. A long thin nervous hand stole in through the opening; took the servant by the arm; and drew her out into the passage. In her place, a man entered the room with his hat on. The man was Nugent Dubourg.

He stopped where the servant had stopped. He looked at Lucilla; he looked at his brother; he looked at me.

Not a word fell from him. There he stood, fronting the friend whom he had calumniated and the brother whom he had betrayed. There he stood—with his eyes fixed on Lucilla, sitting between us—knowing that it was all over; knowing that the woman for whom he had degraded himself, was a woman parted from him for ever. There he stood, in the hell of his own making—and devoured his torture in silence.

On his brother's appearance, Oscar had risen, and had raised Lucilla with him. He now advanced a step towards Nugent, still holding to him his betrothed wife.

I followed them, eagerly watching his face. There was no fear in me now of what he might do. Lucilla's blessed influence had found, and cast out, the lurking demon that had been hidden in him. With a mind attentive but not alarmed, I waited to see how he would meet the emergency that confronted him.

"Nugent!" he said, very quietly.

Nugent's head drooped—he made no answer.

Lucilla, hearing Oscar pronounce the name, instantly understood what had happened. She shuddered with horror. Oscar gently placed her in my arms, and advanced again alone towards his brother. His face expressed the struggle in him of some subtly-mingling influences of love and anguish, of sorrow and shame. He recalled to me in the strangest manner my past experience of him, when he had first trusted me with the story of the Trial, and when he had told me that Nugent was the good angel of his life.

He went up to the place at which his brother was standing. In the simple, boyish way, so familiar to me in the bygone time, he laid his hand on his brother's arm.

"Nugent!" he said. "Are you the same dear good brother who saved me from dying on the scaffold, and who cheered my hard life afterwards? Are you the same bright, clever, noble fellow that I was always so fond of, and so proud of?"

He paused, and removed his brother's hat. With careful, caressing hand, he parted his brother's ruffled hair over the forehead. Nugent's head sank lower. His face was distorted, his hands were clenched, in the dumb agony of remembrance which that tender voice and that kind hand had set loose in him. Oscar gave him time to recover himself: Oscar spoke next to me.

"You know Nugent," he said. "You remember when we first met, my telling you that Nugent was an angel? You saw for yourself, when he came to Dimchurch, how kindly he helped me; how faithfully he kept my secrets; what a true friend he was. Look at him—and you will feel, as I do, that we have misunderstood and misinterpreted him, in some monstrous way." He turned again to Nugent. "I daren't tell you," he went on, "what I have heard about you, and what I have believed about you, and what vile unbrotherly thoughts I have had of being revenged on you. Thank God, they are gone! My dear fellow, I look back at them—now I see you—as I might look back at a horrible dream. How can I see you, Nugent, and believe that you have been false to me? You, a villain who has tried to rob poor Me of the only woman in the world who cares for me! You, so handsome and so popular, who may marry any woman you like! It can't be. You have drifted innocently into some false position without knowing it. Defend yourself. No. Let me defend you. You shan't humble yourself to anybody. Tell me how you have really acted towards Lucilla, and towards me—and leave it to your brother to set you right with everybody. Come, Nugent! lift up your head—and tell me what I shall say."

Nugent lifted his head, and looked at Oscar.

Ghastly as his face was, I saw something in his eyes, when he first fixed them on his brother, which again reminded me of past days—the days when he had joined us at Dimchurch, and when he used to talk of "poor Oscar" in the tender, light-hearted way that first won me. I thought once more of the memorable night-interview between us at Browndown, when Oscar had left England. Again, I called to mind the signs which had told of the nobler nature of the man pleading with him. Again, I remembered the remorse which had moved him to tears—the effort he had made in my presence to atone for past misdoing, and to struggle for the last time against the guilty passion that possessed him. Was the nature which could feel that remorse utterly depraved? Was the man who had made that effort—the last of many that had gone before it—irredeemably bad?

"Wait!" I whispered to Lucilla, trembling and weeping in my arms. "He will deserve our sympathy; he will win our pardon and our pity yet!"

"Come!" Oscar repeated. "Tell me what I shall say."

Nugent drew from his pocket a sheet of paper with writing on it.

"Say," he answered, "that I gave notice of your marriage at the church here-and that I went to London and got you this."

He handed the sheet of paper to his brother. It was the Marriage License, taken out in his brother's name.

"Be happy, Oscar," he added. "You deserve it."

He threw one arm in his old easy protecting way round his brother. His hand, as he did this, touched the breast-pocket of Oscar's coat. Before it was possible to stop him, his dexterous fingers had opened the pocket, and had taken from it a little toy-pistol with a chased silver handle of Oscar's own workmanship.

"Was this for me?" he asked, with a faint smile. "My poor boy! you could never have done it, could you?" He kissed Oscar's dark cheek, and put the pistol into his own pocket. "The handle is your work," he said. "I shall take it as your present to me. Return to Browndown when you are married. I am going to travel again. You shall hear from me before I leave England. God bless you, Oscar. Good-bye."

He put his brother back from him with a firm and gentle hand. I attempted to advance with Lucilla, and speak to him. Something in his face—looking at me out of his mournful eyes, calm, stern, and superhuman, like a look of doom—warned me back from him, and filled me with the foreboding that I should see him no more. He walked to the door, and opened it—turned—and, fixing his farewell look on Lucilla, saluted us silently with a bend of his head. The door closed on him softly. In a few minutes only from the time when he had entered the room, he had left us again—and left us for ever.

We waited, spell-bound—we could not speak. The void that he left behind him was dreary and dreadful. I was the first who moved. In silence, I led Lucilla back to our seat on the sofa, and beckoned to Oscar to go to her in my place.

This done, I left them—and went out to meet Lucilla's father, on his return to the hotel. I wished to prevent him from disturbing them. After what had happened, it was good for those two to be alone.



EPILOGUE

Madame Pratolungo's Last Words

TWELVE years have passed since the events occurred which it has been the business of these pages to relate. I am at my desk; looking idly at all the leaves of writing which my pen has filled, and asking myself if there is more yet to add, before I have done.

There is more—not much.

Oscar and Lucilla claim me first. Two days after they were restored to each other at Sydenham, they were married at the church in that place. It was a dull wedding. Nobody was in spirits but Mr. Finch. We parted in London. The bride and bridegroom returned to Browndown. The rector remained in town for a day or two visiting some friends. I went back to my father, to accompany him, as I had promised, on his journey from Marseilles to Paris.

As well as I remember, I remained a fortnight abroad. In the course of that time, I received kind letters from Browndown. One of them announced that Oscar had heard from his brother.

Nugent's letter was not a long one. It was dated at Liverpool, and it announced his embarkation for America in two hours' time. He had heard of a new expedition to the Arctic regions—then fitting out in the United States—with the object of discovering the open Polar sea, supposed to be situated between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla. It had instantly struck him that this expedition offered an entirely new field of study to a landscape painter in search of the sublimest aspects of Nature. He had decided on volunteering to join the Arctic explorers—and he had already raised the necessary money for his outfit by the sale of the only valuables he possessed—his jewelry and his books. If he wanted more, he engaged to apply to Oscar. In any case, he promised to write again, before the expedition sailed. And so, for the present only, he would bid his brother and sister affectionately farewell.—When I afterwards looked at the letter myself, I found nothing in it which referred in the slightest degree to the past, or which hinted at the state of the writer's own health and spirits.

I returned to our remote Southdown village; and occupied the room which Lucilla had herself prepared for me at Browndown.

I found the married pair as tranquil and as happy in their union as a man and woman could be. The absent Nugent dwelt a little sadly in their minds at times, I suspect, as well as in mine. It was perhaps on this account, that Lucilla appeared to me to be quieter than she used to be in her maiden days. However, my presence did something towards restoring her to her old spirits—and Grosse's speedy arrival exerted its enlivening influence in support of mine.

As soon as the gout would let him get on his feet, he presented himself with his instruments, at Browndown, eager for another experiment on Lucilla's eyes.

"If my operations had failed," he said, "I should not have plagued you no more. But my operations has not failed: it is you who have failed to take care of your nice new eyes when I gave them to you."

In those terms he endeavored to persuade her to let him attempt another operation. She steadily refused to submit to it—and the discussion that followed roused her famously.

More than once afterwards Grosse tried to make her change her mind. He tried in vain. The disputes between the two made the house ring again. Lucilla found all her old gaiety, in refuting the grotesque arguments and persuasions of our worthy German. To me—when I once or twice attempted to shake her resolution—she replied in another way, merely repeating the words she had said to me at Sydenham: "My life lives in my love. And my love lives in my blindness." It is only right to add that Mr. Sebright, and another competent authority consulted with him, declared unhesitatingly that she was right. Under the circumstances, Mr. Sebright was of opinion that the success of Grosse's operation could never have been more than temporary. His colleague, after examining Lucilla's eyes, at a later period, entirely agreed with him. Which was in the right—these two or Grosse—who can say? As blind Lucilla, you first knew her. As blind Lucilla, you see the last of her now. If you feel inclined to regret this, remember that the one thing essential was the thing she possessed. Her life was a happy one. Bear this in mind—and don't forget that your conditions of happiness need not necessarily be her conditions also.

In the time I am now writing of, the second letter from Nugent arrived. It was written the evening before he sailed for the Polar seas. One line in it touched us deeply. "Who knows whether I shall ever see England again! If a boy is born to you, Oscar, call him by my name—for my sake."

Enclosed in this letter was a private communication from Nugent, addressed to me. It was the confession to which I have alluded in my notes attached to Lucilla's Journal. These words only were added at the end: "You now know everything. Forgive me—if you can. I have not escaped without suffering; remember that." After making use of the narrative, as you already know, I have burnt it all, except those last lines.

At distant intervals, we heard twice of the exploring ship, from whaling vessels. Then, there was a long dreary interval, without news of any sort. Then, a dreadful report that the expedition was lost. Then, the confirmation of the report—a lapse of a whole year, and no tidings of the missing men.

They were well provided with supplies of all kinds; and there was a general hope that they might be holding out. A new expedition was sent—and sent vainly—in search of them overland. Rewards were offered to whaling vessels to find them, and were never earned. We wore mourning for Nugent; we were a melancholy household. Two more years passed—before the fate of the expedition was discovered. A ship in the whale trade, driven out of her course, fell in with a wrecked and dismantled vessel, lost in the ice. Let the last sentences of the captain's report tell the story.

THE END