"I didn't hear Miss Lucilla say anything to that effect, sir."

Mr. Finch waved his hand with a look of disgust, intimating that Zillah's audience was over. Nugent, upon that, came forward, and stopped her as she was leaving the room.

"Have you nothing more to tell us?" he asked.

"No, sir."

"Why don't they come back here? What are they doing in the other room?"

"They were doing what I mentioned just now, sir—they were sitting side by side on the sofa. Miss Lucilla was talking, and the doctor was listening to her. And Jicks," added Zillah, addressing herself confidentially to me, "was behind them, picking the doctor's pocket."

Oscar put in a word there—by no means in his most gracious manner.

"What was Miss Lucilla saying to the doctor?"

"I don't know, sir."

"You don't know?"

"I couldn't hear, sir. Miss Lucilla was speaking to him in a whisper."

After that, there was no more to be said. Zillah—disturbed over her domestic occupations and eager to get back to her kitchen—seized the first chance of leaving the room; going out in such a hurry that she forgot to close the door after her. We all looked at each other. To what conclusion did the nurse's strange answers point? It was plainly impossible for Oscar (no matter how quick his temper might be) to feel jealous of a man of Grosse's age and personal appearance. Still, the prolonged interview between patient and surgeon—after the decision had been pronounced and the trial of the eyes definitely deferred to a future day—had a strange appearance, to say the least of it.

Nugent returned to his place at the window—puzzled, suspicious, deep in his own thoughts. Reverend Finch, swelling with unspoken words, rose portentously from his chair by his wife's side. Had he discovered another chance of inflicting his eloquence on us? It was only too evident that he had! He looked at us with his ominous smile. He addressed us in his biggest voice.

"My Christian friends——"

Nugent, unassailable by eloquence, persisted in looking out of the window. Oscar, insensible to every earthly consideration except the one consideration of Lucilla, drew me aside unceremoniously out of the rector's hearing. Mr. Finch resumed.

"My Christian friends, I could wish to say a few appropriate words."

"Go to Lucilla!" whispered Oscar, taking me entreatingly by both hands. "You needn't stand on ceremony with her. Do, do see what is going on in the next room!"

Mr. Finch resumed.

"The occasion seems to call upon one in my position for a little sustaining advice on Christian duty—I would say, the duty of being cheerful under disappointment."

Oscar persisted.

"Do me the greatest of all favors! Pray find out what is keeping Lucilla with that man!"

Mr. Finch cleared his throat, and lifted his right hand persuasively by way of introduction to his next sentence.

I answered Oscar in a whisper.

"I don't like intruding on them. Lucilla told the nurse they were to be left by themselves."

Just as I said the words, I became aware of a sudden bump against me from behind. I turned, and discovered Jicks with the battering-ram-doll, preparing for a second plunge at me. She stopped, when she found that she had attracted my attention; and, taking hold of my dress, tried to pull me out of the room.

"Remove that child!" cried the rector, exasperated by this new interruption.

The child pulled harder and harder at my dress. Something had apparently happened outside the sitting-room which had produced a strong impression on her. Her little round face was flushed; her bright blue eyes were wide open and staring. "Jicks wants to speak to you," she said—and pulled at me impatiently harder than ever.

I stooped down with the double purpose of obeying Mr. Finch's commands and of humouring the child's whim, by carrying Jicks out of the room, when I was startled by a sound from the bed-chamber—the sound, loud and peremptory, of Lucilla's voice.

"Let go of me!" she cried. "I am a woman—I won't be treated like a child."

There was a moment of silence—followed by the rustling sound of her dress, approaching us along the corridor.

Grosse's voice—unmistakably angry and excited—became audible at the same time. "No! Come back! come back!"

The rustling sound of the dress came nearer.

Nugent and Mr. Finch moved together closer to the door. Oscar caught me by the arm. He and I were on the left-hand side of the door: Nugent and the rector were on the right-hand side. It all happened with the suddenness of a flash of lightning. My heart stood still. I couldn't speak. I couldn't move.

The half-closed door of the sitting-room was burst wide open—roughly, violently, as if a man, not a woman, had been on the other side. (The rector drew back; Nugent remained where he was.) Wildly groping her way with outstretched arms, as I had never seen her grope it in the time of her blindness, Lucilla staggered into the room. Merciful God! the bandage was off. The life, the new life of sight, was in her eyes. It transfigured her face: it irradiated her beauty with an awful and unearthly light. She saw! she saw!

For an instant she stopped at the door, swaying to and fro; giddy under the broad stare of daylight.

She looked at the rector—then at Mrs. Finch, who had followed her husband. She paused bewildered, and put her hands over her eyes. She slightly changed her position; turned her head, as if to look at me; turned it back sharply towards the right-hand side of the door again; and threw up her arms in the air, with a burst of hysterical laughter. The laughter ended in a scream of triumph, which rang through the house. She rushed at Nugent Dubourg, so blindly incapable of measuring her distance that she struck against him violently, and nearly threw him down. "I know him! I know him!" she cried—and flung her arms round his neck. "Oh, Oscar! Oscar!" She clasped him to her with all her strength as the name passed her lips, and dropped her head on his bosom in an ecstasy of joy.

It was done before any of us had recovered the use of our senses. The whole horrible scene must have begun and ended in less than half a minute of time. The surgeon, who had run into the room after her, empty-handed, turned suddenly, and left it again; coming back with the bandage, left forgotten in the bed-room. Grosse was the first among us to recover his presence of mind. He approached her in silence.

She heard him, before he could take her by surprise, and slip the bandage over her eyes. The moment when I turned, horror-struck, to look at Oscar, was also the moment when she lifted her head from Nugent's bosom to look for the surgeon. Her eyes followed the direction taken by mine. They encountered Oscar's face. She saw the blue-black hue of it in full light.

A cry of terror escaped her: she started back, shuddering, and caught hold of Nugent's arm. Grosse motioned sternly to him to turn her face from the window; and lifted the bandage. She clutched at it with feverish eagerness as he held it up. "Put it on again!" she said, holding by Nugent with one hand, and lifting the other to point towards Oscar with a gesture of disgust. "Put it on again. I have seen too much already."

Grosse fastened the bandage over her eyes, and waited a little. She still held Nugent's arm. The sting of my indignation as I saw it, roused me into doing something. I stepped forward to part them. Grosse stopped me. "No!" he said. "Don't make bad worse." I looked at Oscar for the second time. There he stood, as he had stood from the first moment when she appeared at the door—his eyes staring wildly straight before him; his limbs set and fixed. I went to him, and touched him. He seemed not to feel it. I spoke to him. I might as well have spoken to a man of stone.

Grosse's voice drew my attention, for a moment, the other way.

"Come!" he said, trying to take Lucilla back into her own room.

She shook her head, and tightened her hold on Nugent's arm.

"You take me," she whispered. "As far as the door."

I again attempted to stop it; and again the German put me back.

"Not to-day!" he said sternly. With that, he made a sign to Nugent, and placed himself on Lucilla's other side. In silence, the two men led her out of the room. The door closed on them. It was over.



CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SIXTH

The Brothers Meet

A FAINT sound of crying found its way to my ears from the lower end of the room, and reminded me that the rector and his wife had been present among us. Feeble Mrs. Finch was lying back in her chair, weeping and wailing over what had happened. Her husband, with the baby in his arms, was trying to compose her. I ought perhaps to have offered my help—but, I own, poor Mrs. Finch's distress produced only a passing impression on me. My whole heart was with another person. I forgot the rector and his wife, and went back to Oscar.

This time he moved—he lifted his head when he saw me. Shall I ever forget the silent misery in that face, the dull dreadful stare in those tearless eyes?

I took his hand—I felt for the poor disfigured, rejected man as his mother might have felt for him—I gave him a mother's kiss. "Be comforted, Oscar," I said. "Trust me to set this right."

He drew a long trembling breath, and pressed my hand gratefully. I attempted to speak to him again—he stopped me by looking suddenly towards the door.

"Is Nugent outside?" he asked in a whisper.

I went into the corridor. It was empty. I looked into Lucilla's room. She and Grosse and the nurse were the only persons in it. I beckoned to Zillah to come out and speak to me. I asked for Nugent. He had left Lucilla abruptly at the bed-room door—he was out of the house. I inquired if it was known in what direction he had gone. Zillah had seen him in the field at the end of the garden, walking away rapidly, with his back to the village, and his face to the hills.

"Nugent has gone," I said, returning to Oscar.

"Add to your kindness to me," he answered. "Let me go too."

A quick fear crossed my mind, that he might be bent on following his brother.

"Wait a little," I said, "and rest here."

He shook his head.

"I must be by myself," he said. After considering a little, he added a question. "Has Nugent gone to Browndown?"

"No. Nugent has been seen walking towards the hills."

He took my hand again. "Be merciful to me," he said. "Let me go."

"Home? To Browndown?"

"Yes."

"Let me go with you."

He shook his head. "Forgive me. You shall hear from me later in the day."

No tears! no flaming-up of the quick temper that I knew so well! Nothing in his face, nothing in his voice, nothing in his manner, but a composure miserable to see—the composure of despair.

"At least, let me accompany you to the gate," I said.

"God bless and reward you!" he answered. "Let me go."

With a gentle hand—and yet with a firmness which took me completely by surprise—he separated himself from me, and went out.

I could stand no longer—I dropped trembling into a chair. The conviction forced itself on me that there were worse complications, direr misfortunes, still to come. I was almost beside myself—I broke out vehemently with wild words spoken in my own language. Mrs. Finch recalled me to my senses. I saw her as in a dream, drying her tears, and looking at me in alarm. The rector approached, with profuse expressions of sympathy and offers of assistance. I wanted no comforting. I had served a hard apprenticeship to life; I had been well seasoned to trouble. "Thank you, sir," I said. "Look to Mrs. Finch." There was more air in the corridor. I went out again, to walk about, and get the better of it there.

A small object attracted my attention, crouched up on one of the window seats. The small object was—Jicks.

I suppose the child's instinct must have told her that something had gone wrong. She looked furtively sideways at me, round her doll: she had grave doubts of my intentions towards her. "Are you going to whack Jicks?" asked the curious little creature, shrinking into her corner. I sat down by her, and soon recovered my place in her confidence. She began to chatter again as fast as usual. I listened to her as I could have listened to no grown-up person at that moment. In some mysterious way that I cannot explain, the child comforted me. Little by little, I learnt what she had wanted with me, when she had attempted to drag me out of the room. She had seen all that had passed in the bed-chamber; and she had run out to take me back with her, and show me the wonderful sight of Lucilla with the bandage off her eyes. If I had been wise enough to listen to Jicks, I might have prevented the catastrophe that had happened. I might have met Lucilla in the corridor, and have forced her back into her own room and turned the key on her.

It was too late now to regret what had happened. "Jicks has been good," I said, patting my little friend on the head with a heavy heart. The child listened—considered with herself gravely—got off the window-seat—and claimed her reward for being good, with that excellent brevity of speech which so eminently distinguished her:

"Jicks will go out."

With those words, she shouldered her doll; and walked off. The last I saw of her, she was descending the stairs as a workman descends a ladder, on her way to the garden—and from the garden (the first time the gate was opened) to the hills. If I could have gone out with her light heart, I would have joined Jicks.

I had hardly lost sight of the child, before the door of Lucilla's room opened, and Herr Grosse appeared in the corridor.

"Soh!" he muttered with a gesture of relief, "the very womans I was looking for. A nice mess-fix we are in now! I must stop with Feench. (I shall end in hating Feench!) Can you put me into a beds for the night?"

I assured him that he could easily sleep at the rectory. In answer to my inquiries after his patient, he gravely acknowledged that he was anxious about Lucilla. The varying and violent emotions which had shaken her (acting through her nervous system) might produce results which would imperil the recovery of her sight. Absolute repose was not simply necessary—it was now the only chance for her. For the next four-and-twenty hours, he must keep watch over her eyes. At the end of that time—no earlier—he might be able to say whether the mischief done would be fatal to her sight or not. I asked how she had contrived to get her bandage off, and to make her fatal entrance into the sitting-room.

He shrugged his shoulders. "There are times," he said cynically, "when every womans is a hussy, and every mans is a fool. This was one of the times."

It appeared, on further explanation, that my poor Lucilla had pleaded so earnestly (after the nurse had left the room) to be allowed to try her eyes, and had shown such ungovernable disappointment when he persisted in saying No, that he had yielded—not so much to her entreaties, as to his own conviction that it would be less dangerous to humour her than to thwart her, with such a sensitive and irritable temperament as hers. He had first bargained however, on his side, that she should remain in the bed-chamber, and be content, for that time, with using her sight on the objects round her in the room. She had promised all that he asked—and he had been foolish enough to trust to her promise. The bandage once off, she had instantly set every consideration at defiance—had torn herself out of his hands like a mad creature—and had rushed into the sitting-room before he could stop her. The rest had followed as a matter of course. Feeble as it was at the first trial of it, her sense of sight was sufficiently restored to enable her to distinguish objects dimly. Of the three persons who had offered themselves to view on the right-hand side of the door, one (Mrs. Finch) was a woman; another (Mr. Finch) was a short, grey-headed, elderly man; the third (Nugent), in his height—which she could see—and in the color of his hair—which she could see-was the only one of the three who could possibly represent Oscar. The catastrophe that followed was (as things were) inevitable. Now that the harm was done, the one alternative left was to check the mischief at the point which it had already reached. Not the slightest hint at the terrible mistake that she had made must be suffered to reach her ears. If we any of us said one word about it before he authorized us to do so, he would refuse to answer for the consequences, and would then and there throw up the case.

So, in his broken English, Herr Grosse explained what had happened, and issued his directions for our future conduct.

"No person is to go into her," he said, in conclusion, "but you and goot Mrs. Zillahs. You two watch her, turn-about-turn-about. In a whiles, she will sleep. For me, I go to smoke my tobaccos in the garden. Hear this, Madame Pratolungo. When Gott made the womens, he was sorry afterwards for the poor mens—and he made tobaccos to comfort them."

Favoring me with this peculiar view of the scheme of creation, Herr Grosse shook his shock head, and waddled away to the garden.

I softly opened the bed-room door, and looked in—disappearing just in time to escape the rector and Mrs. Finch returning to their own side of the house.

Lucilla was lying on the sofa. She asked who it was in a drowsy voice—she was happily just sinking into slumber. Zillah occupied a chair near her. I was not wanted for the moment—and I was glad, for the first time in my experience at Dimchurch, to get out of the room again. By some contradiction in my character which I am not able to explain, there was a certain hostile influence in the sympathy that I felt for Oscar, which estranged me, for the moment, from Lucilla. It was not her fault—and yet (I am ashamed to own it) I almost felt angry with her for reposing so comfortably, when I thought of the poor fellow, without a creature to say a kind word to him, alone at Browndown.

Out again in the corridor, the question faced me:—What was I to do next?

The loneliness of the house was insupportable; my anxiety about Oscar grew more than I could endure. I put on my hat, and went out.

Having no desire to interfere with Herr Grosse's enjoyment of his pipe, I made my way through the garden as quickly as possible, and found myself in the village again. My uneasiness on the subject of Oscar, was matched by my angry desire to know what Nugent would do. Now that he had worked the very mischief which his brother had foreseen to be possible—the very mischief which it had been Oscar's one object to prevent in asking him to leave Dimchurch—would he take his departure? would he rid us, at once and for ever, of the sight of him? The bare idea of the other alternative—I mean, of his remaining in the place—shook me with such an unutterable dread of what might happen next, that my feet refused to support me. I was obliged, just beyond the village, to sit down by the road-side, and wait till my giddy head steadied itself before I attempted to move again.

After a minute or two, I heard footsteps coming along the road. My heart gave one great leap in me. I thought it was Nugent.

A moment more brought the person in view. It was only Mr. Gootheridge of the village inn, on his way home. He stopped, and took off his hat.

"Tired, ma'am?" he said.

The uppermost idea in my mind found its way somehow, ill as I was, to expression on my lips—in the form of a question addressed to the landlord.

"Do you happen to have seen anything of Mr. Nugent Dubourg?" I asked.

"I saw him not five minutes since, ma'am."

"Where?"

"Going into Browndown."

I started up, as if I had been struck or shot. Worthy Mr. Gootheridge stared. I wished him good-day, and went on as fast as my feet would take me, straight to Browndown. Had the brothers met in the house? I turned cold at the bare thought of it—but I still kept on. There was an obstinate resolution in me to part them, which served me in place of courage. Account for it as you may, I was bold and frightened both at the same time. At one moment, I was fool enough to say to myself, "They will kill me." At another, just as foolishly, I found comfort in the opposite view. "Bah! They are gentlemen; they can't hurt a woman!"

The servant was standing idling at the front door, when I arrived in sight of the house. This, in itself, was unusual. He was a hard-working well-trained man. On other occasions, nobody had ever seen him out of his proper place. He advanced a few steps to meet me. I looked at him carefully. Not the slightest appearance of disturbance was visible in his face.

"Is Mr. Oscar at home?" I asked.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am. Mr. Oscar is at home—but you can't see him. He and Mr. Nugent are together."

I rested my hand on the low wall in front of the house, and made a desperate effort to put a calm face on it.

"Surely Mr. Oscar will see me?" I said.

"I have Mr. Oscar's orders, ma'am, to wait at the door, and tell everybody who comes to the house (without exception) that he is engaged."

The house-door was half open. I listened intently while the man was speaking. If they had been at high words together, I must have heard them in the silence of the lonely hills all round us. I heard nothing.

It was strange, it was inconceivable. At the same time it relieved me. There they were together, and no harm had come of it, so far.

I left my card—and walked on a little, past the corner of the house wall. As soon as I was out of the servant's sight, I turned back to the side of the building, and ventured as near as I durst to the window of the sitting-room. Their voices reached me, but not their words. On both sides, the tones were low and confidential. Not a note of anger in either voice—listen for it as I might! I left the house again, breathless with amazement, and (so rapidly does a woman shift from one emotion to another) burning with curiosity.

After half an hour of aimless wandering in the valley, I returned to the rectory.

Lucilla was still sleeping. I took Zillah's place, and sent her into the kitchen. The landlady of the inn was there to help us with the dinner. But she was hardly equal, single-handed, to the superintendence of such dishes as we had to set before Herr Grosse. It was high time I relieved Zillah if we were to pass successfully through the ordeal of the great surgeon's criticism, as reviewer of all the sauces.

An hour more passed before Lucilla woke. I sent a messenger to Grosse, who appeared enveloped in a halo of tobacco, examined the patient's eyes, felt her pulse, ordered her wine and jelly, filled his monstrous pipe, and gruffly returned to his promenade in the garden.

The day wore on. Mr. Finch came to make inquiries, and then went back to his wife—whom he described as "hysterically irresponsible," and in imminent need of another warm bath. He declined, in his most pathetic manner, to meet the German at dinner. "After what I have suffered, after what I have seen, these banquetings—I would say, these ticklings of the palate—are not to my taste. You mean well, Madame Pratolungo. (Good creature!) But I am not in heart for feasting. Simple fare, by my wife's couch; a few consoling words, in the character of pastor and husband, when the infant is quiet. So my day is laid out. I wish you well. I don't object to your little dinner. Good day! good day!"

A second examination of Lucilla's eyes brought us to the dinner-hour.

At the sight of the table-cloth, Herr Grosse's good humour returned. We two dined together alone—the German sending in selections of his own making from the dishes to Lucilla's room. So far, he said, she had escaped any serious injury. But he still insisted on keeping his patient perfectly quiet, and he refused to answer for anything until the night had passed. As for me, Oscar's continued silence weighed more and more heavily on my spirits. My past suspense in the darkened room with Lucilla seemed to be a mere trifle by comparison with the keener anxieties which I suffered now. I saw Grosse's eyes glaring discontentedly at me through his spectacles. He had good reason to look at me as he did—I had never before been so stupid and so disagreeable in all my life.

Towards the end of the dinner, there came news from Browndown at last. The servant sent in a message by Zillah, begging me to see him for a moment outside the sitting-room door.

I made my excuses to my guest, and hurried out.

The instant I saw the servant's face, my heart sank. Oscar's kindness had attached the man devotedly to his master. I saw his lips tremble, and his color come and go, when I looked at him.

"I have brought you a letter, ma'am."

He handed me a letter addressed to me in Oscar's handwriting.

"How is your master?" I asked.

"Not very well, when I saw him last."

"When you saw him last?"

"I bring sad news, ma'am. There's a break-up at Browndown."

"What do you mean? Where is Mr. Oscar?"

"Mr. Oscar has left Dimchurch."



CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SEVENTH

The Brothers change Places

I VAINLY believed I had prepared myself for any misfortune that could fall on us. The man's last words dispelled my delusion. My gloomiest forebodings had never contemplated such a disaster as had now happened. I stood petrified, thinking of Lucilla, and looking helplessly at the servant. Try as I might, I was perfectly incapable of speaking to him.

He felt no such difficulty on his side. One of the strangest peculiarities in the humbler ranks of the English people, is the sort of solemn relish which they have for talking of their own misfortunes. To be the objects of a calamity of any kind, seems to raise them in their own estimations. With a dreary enjoyment of his miserable theme, the servant expatiated on his position as a man deprived of the best of masters; turned adrift again in the world to seek another service; hopeless of ever again finding himself in such a situation as he had lost. He roused me at last into speaking to him, by sheer dint of irritating my nerves until I could endure him no longer.

"Has Mr. Oscar gone away alone?" I asked.

"Yes, ma'am, quite alone."

(What had become of Nugent? I was too much interested in Oscar to be able to put the question, at that moment.)

"When did your master go?" I went on.

"Better than two hours since."

"Why didn't I hear of it before?"

"I had Mr. Oscar's orders not to tell you, ma'am, till this time in the evening."

Wretched as I was already, my spirits sank lower still when I heard that. The order given to the servant looked like a premeditated design, not only to leave Dimchurch, but also to keep us in ignorance of his whereabouts afterwards.

"Has Mr. Oscar gone to London?" I inquired.

"He hired Gootheridge's chaise, ma'am, to take him to Brighton. And he told me with his own lips that he had left Browndown never to come back. I know no more of it than that."

He had left Browndown, never to come back! For Lucilla's sake, I declined to believe that. The servant was exaggerating, or the servant had misunderstood what had been said to him. The letter in my hand reminded me that I had perhaps needlessly questioned him on matters which his master had confided to my own knowledge only. Before I dismissed him for the night, I made my deferred inquiry on the hateful subject of the other brother.

"Where is Mr. Nugent?"

"At Browndown."

"Do you mean to say that he is going to stay at Browndown?"

"I don't know, ma'am, for certain. I see no signs of his meaning to leave; and he has said nothing to that effect."

I had the greatest difficulty to keep myself from breaking out before the servant. My indignation almost choked me. The best way was to wish him good night. I took the best way—only calling him back (as a measure of caution) to say one last word.

"Have you told anybody at the rectory of Mr. Oscar's departure?" I asked.

"No, ma'am."

"Say nothing, about it then, as you go out. Thank you for bringing me the letter. Good night."

Having thus provided against any whisper of what had happened reaching Lucilla's ears that evening, I returned to Herr Grosse to make my excuses, and to tell him (as I honestly could) that I was in sore need of being permitted to retire privately to my own room. I found my illustrious guest putting a plate over the final dish of the dinner, full of the tenderest anxiety to keep it warm on my account.

"Here is a lofely cheese-omelets," said Grosse. "Two-thirds of him I have eaten my own self. The odder third I sweat with anxiety to keep warm for you. Sit down! sit down! Every moment he is getting cold."

"I am much obliged to you, Herr Grosse. I have just heard some miserable news——"

"Ach, Gott! don't tell it to me!" the wretch burst out with a look of consternation. "No miserable news, I pray you, after such a dinner as I have eaten. Let me do my digestions! My goot-dear-creature, if you lofe me let me do my digestions!"

"Will you excuse me, if I leave you to your digestion, and retire to my own room?"

He rose in a violent hurry, and opened the door for me.

"Yes! yes! From the deep bottoms of my heart I excuse you. Goot Madame Pratolungo, retire! retire!"

I had barely passed the threshold, before the door was closed behind me. I heard the selfish old brute rub his hands, and chuckle over his success in shutting me and my sorrow both out of the room together.

Just as my hand was on my own door, it occurred to me that I should do well to make sure of not being surprised by Lucilla over the reading of Oscar's letter. The truth is that I shrank from reading it. In spite of my resolution to disbelieve the servant, the dread was now growing on me that the letter would confirm his statement, and would force it on me as the truth that Oscar had left us never to return. I retraced my steps, and entered Lucilla's room.

I could just see her, by the dim night-light burning in a cornet to enable the surgeon or the nurse to find their way to her. She was alone in her favorite little wicker-work chair, with the doleful white bandage over her eyes—to all appearance quite content, busily knitting!

"Don't you feel lonely, Lucilla?"

She turned her head towards me, and answered in her gayest tones.

"Not in the least. I am quite happy as I am.

"Why is Zillah not with you?"

"I sent her away."

"You sent her away?"

"Yes! I couldn't enjoy myself thoroughly to-night, unless I felt that I was quite alone. I have seen him, my dear—I have seen him! How could you possibly think I felt lonely? I am so inordinately happy that I am obliged to knit to keep myself quiet. If you say much more, I shall get up and dance—I know I shall! Where is Oscar? That odious Grosse—no! it is too bad to talk of the dear old man in that way, after he has given me back my sight. Still it is cruel of him to say that I am overexcited, and to forbid Oscar to come and see me to-night. Is Oscar with you, in the next room? Is he very much disappointed at being parted from me in this way? Say I am thinking of him—since I have seen him—with such new thoughts!"

"Oscar is not here to-night, my dear."

"No? then he is at Browndown of course with that poor wretched disfigured brother of his. I have got over my terror of Nugent's hideous face. I am even beginning (though I never liked him, as you know) to pity him, with such a dreadful complexion as that. Don't let us talk about it! Don't let us talk at all! I want to go on thinking of Oscar."

She resumed her knitting, and shut herself up luxuriously in her own happy thoughts. Knowing what I knew, it was nothing less than heart-breaking to see her and hear her. Afraid to trust myself to say another word, I softly closed the door, and charged Zillah (when her mistress rang her bell) to say for me that I was weary after the events of the day, and had gone to rest in my bed-room.

At last, I was alone. At last I was at the end of my maneuvers to spare myself the miserable necessity of opening Oscar's letter. After first locking my door, I broke the seal, and read the lines which follow.



"KIND AND DEAR FRIEND,—Forgive me: I am going to surprise and distress you. My letter thanks you gratefully; and bids you a last farewell.

"Summon all your indulgence for me. Read these lines to the end: they will tell you what happened after I left the rectory.

"Nothing had been seen of Nugent, when I reached this house. It was not till a quarter of an hour later that I heard his voice at the door, calling to me, and asking if I had come back. I answered, and he joined me in the sitting-room. Nugent's first words to me were these:—" 'Oscar, I have come to ask your pardon, and to bid you good-bye.'

"I can give you no idea of the tone in which he spoke to me: it would have gone straight to your heart, as it went straight to mine. For the moment, I was not able to answer him. I could only offer him my hand. He sighed bitterly, and refused to take it.

"'I have something still to tell you,' he said. 'Wait till you have heard it; and give me your hand afterwards—if you can.'

"He even refused to take the chair to which I pointed. He distressed me by standing in my presence as if he was my inferior. The next words that he said to me—

"No! I have need of all my calmness and all my courage. It shakes both to recall what he said to me. I sat down to write this, intending to repeat to you everything that passed between us. Another of my weaknesses! another of my failures! The tears come into my eyes again, when my mind attempts to dwell on the details. I can only tell you the result. My brother's confession may be summed up in three words. Prepare yourself to be startled; prepare yourself to be grieved.

"Nugent loves her.

"Think of this discovery falling on me, after I had seen my innocent Lucilla's arms round his neck—after my own eyes had shown me how she rejoiced over her first sight of him; how she shuddered at her first sight of me! Need I tell you what I suffered? No.

"Nugent held out his hand, when he had done—as I had held out mine before he began.

"'The one atonement I can make to you and to her,' he said, 'is never to let either of you set eyes on me again. Shake hands, Oscar; and let me go.'

"If I had willed it so—so it might have ended. I willed it differently. It has ended differently. Can you guess how?"



I laid down the letter for a moment. It cut me with such keen regret; it fired me with such hot rage—that I was within a hairsbreadth of tearing the rest of it up unread, and trampling it under my feet. I took a turn in the room. I dipped my handkerchief in water, and bound it round my head. In a minute or two I was myself again—I could force my mind away from my poor Lucilla, and return to the letter. It proceeded thus:

"I can write calmly of what I have next to tell you. You shall hear what I have decided, and what I have done.

"I told Nugent to wait in the room, while I went away, and thought over what he had said to me, by myself. He attempted to resist this. I insisted on his yielding. For the first time in our lives, we changed places. It was I who took the lead, and he who followed. I left him and went out into the valley alone.

"The heavenly tranquillity, the comforting solitude helped me. I saw my position and his, in their true light. Before I got back, I had decided (cost me what it might) on myself making the sacrifice to which my brother had offered to submit. For Lucilla's sake, and for Nugent's sake, I felt the certain assurance in my own mind that it was my duty, and not his, to go.

"Don't blame me; don't grieve for me. Read the rest. I want you to think of this with my thoughts—to feel about it as I feel at this moment.

"Bearing in mind what Nugent has confessed, and what I have myself seen, have I any right to hold Lucilla to her engagement? I am firmly persuaded that I have no right. After inspiring her with terror and disgust at the moment when her eyes first looked at me; after seeing her innocently happy in Nugent's arms—how, in God's name, can I claim her as mine? Our marriage has become an impossibility. For her own sake, I cannot, I dare not, appeal to our engagement. The wreck of my happiness is nothing. The wreck of her happiness would be a crime. I absolve her from her engagement. She is free.

"There is my duty towards Lucilla—as I see it.

"As to Nugent next. I owe it entirely to my brother (at the time of the Trial) that the honor of our family has been saved, and that I have escaped a shameful death on the scaffold. Is there any limit to the obligation that he has laid on me, after doing me such a service as this? There is no limit. The man who loves Lucilla and the brother who has saved my life are one. I am bound to leave him free—I do leave him free—to win Lucilla by open and loyal means, if he can. As soon as Herr Grosse considers that she is fit to bear the disclosure, let her be told of the error into which she has fallen (through my fault)—let her read these lines, purposely written to meet her eye as well as yours—and let my brother tell her afterwards what has passed to-night in this house between himself and me. She loves him now, believing him to be Oscar. Will she love him still, after she has learnt to know him under his own name? The answer to that question rests with Time. If it is an answer in Nugent's favor, I have already arranged to set aside from my income a sufficient yearly sum to place my brother in a position to begin his married life. I wish to leave his genius free to assert itself, untrammeled by pecuniary cares. Possessing, as I do, far more than enough for my own simple wants, I can dedicate my spare money to no better and nobler use than this.

"There is my duty towards Nugent—as I see it.

"What I have decided on you now know. What I have done can be told in two words. I have left Browndown for ever. I have gone, to live or die (as God pleases) under the blow that has fallen on me, far away from you all.

"Perhaps, when years have passed, and when their children are growing up round them, I may see Lucilla again, and may take as the hand of my sister, the hand of the beloved woman who might once have been my wife. This may happen, if I live. If I die, you will none of you know it. My death shall not cast its shadow of sadness on their lives. Forgive me and forget me; and keep, as I keep, that first and noblest of all mortal hopes—the hope of the life to come.

"I enclose, when there is need for you to write to me, the address of my bankers in London. They will have their instructions. If you love me, if you pity me, abstain from attempting to shake my resolution. You may distress me—but you will never change me. Wait to write, until Nugent has had the opportunity of pleading his own cause, and Lucilla has decided on her future life.

"Once more, I thank you for the kindness which has borne with my weaknesses and my follies. God bless you—and goodbye.

"OSCAR."



Of the effect which the first reading of this letter produced on me, I shall say nothing. Even at this distance of time, I shrink from reviving the memory of what I suffered, alone in my room on that miserable night. Let it be enough if I tell you briefly at what decision I arrived.

I determined on doing two things. First, on going to London by the earliest train the next morning, and finding my way to Oscar by means of his bankers. Secondly, on preventing the villain who had accepted the sacrifice of his brother's happiness from entering the rectory in my absence.

The one comfort I had, that night, was in feeling that, on these two points, my mind was made up. There was a stimulant in my sense of my own resolution which strengthened me to make my excuses to Lucilla, without betraying the grief that tortured me when I found myself in her presence again. Before I went to my bed, I had left her quiet and happy; I had arranged with Herr Grosse that he was still to keep his excitable patient secluded from visitors all through the next day; and I had secured as an ally to help me in preventing Nugent from entering the house, no less a person than Reverend Finch himself. I saw him in his study overnight, and told him all that had happened; keeping one circumstance only concealed—namely, Oscar's insane determination to share his fortune with his infamous brother. I purposely led the rector to suppose that Oscar had left Lucilla free to receive the addresses of a man who had dissipated his fortune to the last farthing. Mr. Finch's harangue when this prospect was brought within his range of contemplation, was something to be remembered, but not (on this occasion) to be reported—in mercy to the Church.

By the train of the next morning, I left for London.

By the train of the same evening, I returned alone to Dimchurch; having completely failed to achieve the purpose which taken me to the metropolis.

Oscar had appeared at the bank as soon as the doors were opened in the morning; had drawn out some hundreds of pounds in circular notes; had told the bankers that they should be furnished with an address at which they could write to him, in due course of time; and had departed for the Continent, without leaving a trace behind him.

I spent the day in making what arrangements I could for discovering him by the usual methods of inquiry pursued in such cases; and took the return train to the country, with my mind alternating between despair when I thought of Lucilla, and anger when I thought of the twin-brothers. In the first bitterness of my disappointment, I was quite as indignant with Oscar as with Nugent. With all my heart I cursed the day which had brought the one and the other to Dimchurch.

As we lengthened our distance from London, flying smoothly the tranquil woods and fields, my mind, with time to help it, began to recover its balance. Little by little, the unexpected revelation of firmness and decision in Oscar's conduct—heartily as I still deplored and blamed that conduct—began to have a new effect on my mind. I now looked back in amazement and self-reproach, at my own superficial estimate of the characters of the twin-brothers.

Thinking it over uninterruptedly, with no one in the carriage but myself, I arrived at a conclusion which strongly influenced my conduct in guiding Lucilla through the troubles and perils that were still to come.

Our physical constitutions have, as I take it, more to do with the actions which determine other people's opinions of us (as well as with the course of our own lives) than we generally suppose. A man with delicately-strung nerves says and does things which often lead us to think more meanly of him than he deserves. It is his great misfortune constantly to present himself at his worst. On the other hand, a man provided with nerves vigorously constituted, is provided also with a constitutional health and hardihood which express themselves brightly in his manners, and which lead to a mistaken impression that his nature is what it appears to be on the surface. Having good health, he has good spirits. Having good spirits, he wins as an agreeable companion on the persons with whom he comes in contact—although he may be hiding all the while, under an outer covering which is physically wholesome, an inner nature which is morally diseased. In the last of these typical men, I saw reflected—Nugent. In the first—Oscar. All that was feeblest and poorest in Oscar's nature had shown itself on the surface in past times, to the concealment of its stronger and its nobler side. There had been something hidden in this supersensitive man, who had shrunk under all the small trials of his life in our village, which had proved firm enough, when the greatness of the need called on it, to sustain the terrible disaster that had fallen on him. The nearer I got to the end of my journey, the more certain I felt that I was only now learning (bitterly as he had disappointed me) to estimate Oscar's character at its true value. Inspired by this conviction, I began already to face our hopeless prospects boldly. As long as I had life and strength to help her, I determined that Lucilla should not lose the man, whose best qualities I had failed to discover until he had made up his mind to turn his back on her for ever.

When I reached the rectory, I was informed that Mr. Finch wished to speak to me. My anxiety about Lucilla made me unwilling to submit to any delay in seeing her. I sent a message, informing the rector that I would be with him in a few minutes—and ran up-stairs into Lucilla's room.

"Has it been a very long day, my dear?" I asked, when our first greetings were over.

"It has been a delightful day," she answered joyously. "Grosse took me out for a walk, before he went back to London. Can you guess where our walk led us?"

A chilly sense of misgiving seized me. I drew back from her. I looked at her lovely face without the slightest admiration of it—worse still, with downright distrust of it.

"Where did you go?" I asked.

"To Browndown, of course!"

An exclamation escaped me—("Infamous Grosse!" spit out between my teeth in my own language). I could not help it. I should have died if I had repressed it—I was in such a rage.

Lucilla laughed. "There! there! It was my fault; I insisted on speaking to Oscar. As soon as I had my own way, I behaved perfectly. I never asked to have the bandage taken off; I was satisfied with only speaking to him. Dear old Grosse—he isn't half as hard on me as you and my father—was with us, all the time. It has done me so much good. Don't be sulky about it, you darling Pratolungo! My 'surgeon optic' sanctions my imprudence. I won't ask you to go with me to Browndown to-morrow; Oscar is coming to return my visit."

Those last words decided me. I had had a weary time of it since the morning; but (for me) the day was not at an end yet. I said to myself, "I will have it out with Mr. Nugent Dubourg, before I go to my bed to-night!"

"Can you spare me for a little while?" I asked. "I must go to the other side of the house. Your father wishes to speak to me."

Lucilla started. "About what?" she inquired eagerly.

"About business in London," I answered—and left her, before her curiosity could madden me (in the state I was in at that moment) with more questions.

I found the rector prepared to favor me with his usual flow of language. Fifty Mr. Finches could not have possessed themselves of my attention in the humour I was in at that moment. To the reverend gentleman's amazement, it was I who began—and not he.

"I have just left Lucilla, Mr. Finch. I know what has happened."

"Wait a minute, Madame Pratolungo! One thing is of the utmost importance to begin with. Do you thoroughly understand that I am, in no sense of the word, to blame—?"

"Thoroughly," I interposed. "Of course, they would not have gone to Browndown, if you had consented to let Nugent Dubourg into the house."

"Stop!" said Mr. Finch, elevating his right hand. "My good creature, you are in a state of hysterical precipitation. I will be heard! I did more than refuse my consent. When the man Grosse—I insist on your composing yourself—when the man Grosse came and spoke to me about it, I did more, I say, infinitely more, than refuse my consent. You know my force of language—don't be alarmed! I said, 'Sir! As pastor and parent, My Foot is down'——"

"I understand, Mr. Finch. Whatever you said to Herr Grosse was quite useless; he entirely ignored your personal point of view."

"Madame Pratolungo——!"

"He found Lucilla dangerously agitated by her separation from Oscar: he asserted, what he calls, his professional freedom of action."

"Madame Pratolungo——!"

"You persisted in closing your doors to Nugent Dubourg. He persisted, on his side—and took Lucilla to Browndown."

Mr. Finch got on his feet, and asserted himself at the full pitch of his tremendous voice.

"Silence!" he shouted, with a smack of his open hand on the table at his side.

I didn't care. I shouted. I came down, with a smack of my hand, on the opposite side of the table.

"One question, sir, before I leave you," I said. "Since your daughter went to Browndown, you have had many hours at your disposal. Have you seen Mr. Nugent Dubourg?"

The Pope of Dimchurch suddenly collapsed, in full fulmination of his domestic Bulls.

"Pardon me," he replied, adopting his most elaborately polite manner. "This requires considerable explanation."

I declined to wait for considerable explanation. "You have not seen him?" I said.

"I have not seen him," echoed Mr. Finch. "My position towards Nugent Dubourg is very remarkable, Madame Pratolungo. In my parental character, I should like to wring his neck. In my clerical character, I feel it incumbent on me to pause—and write to him. You feel the responsibility? You understand the distinction?"

I understood that he was afraid. Answering him by an inclination of the head (I hate a coward!) I walked silently to the door.

Mr. Finch returned my bow with a look of helpless perplexity. "Are you going to leave me?" he inquired blandly.

"I am going to Browndown."

If I had said that I was going to a place which the rector had frequent occasion to mention in the stronger passages of his sermons, Mr. Finch's face could hardly have shown more astonishment and alarm than it exhibited when I replied to him in those terms. He lifted his persuasive right hand; he opened his eloquent lips. Before the coming overflow of language could reach me, I was out of the room, on my way to Browndown.



CHAPTER THE THIRTY-EIGHTH

Is there no Excuse for Him?

OSCAR'S dismissed servant (left, during the usual month of warning, to take care of the house) opened the door to me when I knocked. Although the hour was already a late one in primitive Dimchurch, the man showed no signs of surprise at seeing me.

"Is Mr. Nugent Dubourg at home?"

"Yes, ma'am." He lowered his voice, and added, "I think Mr. Nugent expected to see you to-night."

Whether he intended it, or not, the servant had done me a good turn—he had put me on my guard. Nugent Dubourg understood my character better than I had understood his. He had foreseen what would happen, when I heard of Lucilla's visit on my return to the rectory—and he had, no doubt, prepared himself accordingly. I was conscious of a certain nervous trembling (I own) as I followed the servant to the sitting-room. At the moment, however, when he opened the door, this ignoble sensation left me as suddenly as it had come. I felt myself Pratolungo's widow again, when I entered the room.

A reading-lamp, with its shade down, was the only light on the table. Nugent Dubourg, comfortably reposing in an easychair, sat by the lamp, with a cigar in his mouth, and a book in his hand. He put down the book on the table as he rose to receive me. Knowing, by this time, what sort of man I had to deal with, I was determined not to let even the merest trifles escape me. It might have its use in helping me to understand him, if I knew how he had been occupying his mind while he was expecting me to arrive. I looked at the book. It was Rousseau's Confessions.

He advanced with his pleasant smile, and offered his hand as if nothing had happened to disturb our ordinary relations towards each other. I drew back a step, and looked at him.

"Won't you shake hands with me?" he asked.

"I will answer that directly," I said. "Where is your brother?"

"I don't know."

"When you do know, Mr. Nugent Dubourg, and when you have brought your brother back to this house, I will take your hand—not before."

He bowed resignedly, with a little satirical shrug of the shoulders, and asked if he might offer me a chair.

I took a chair for myself, and placed it so that I might be opposite to him when he resumed his seat. He checked himself in the act of sitting down, and looked towards the open window.

"Shall I throw away my cigar?" he said.

"Not on my account. I have no objection to smoking."

"Thank you." He took his chair—keeping his face in the partial obscurity cast by the shade of the lamp. After smoking for a moment, he spoke again, without turning to look at me. "May I ask what your object is in honoring me with this visit?"

"I have two objects. The first is to see that you leave Dimchurch to-morrow morning. The second is to make you restore your brother to his promised wife."

He looked round at me quickly. His experience of my irritable temper had not prepared him for the perfect composure of voice and manner with which I answered his question. He looked back again from me to his cigar, and knocked off the ash at the tip of it (considering with himself) before he addressed his next words to me.

"We will come to the question of my leaving Dimchurch presently," he said. "Have you received a letter from Oscar?"

"Yes."

"Have you read it?"

"I have read it."

"Then you know that we understand each other?"

"I know that your brother has sacrificed himself—and that you have taken a base advantage of the sacrifice."

He started, and looked round at me once more. I saw that something in my language, or in my tone of speaking, had stung him.

"You have your privilege as a lady," he said. "Don't push it too far. What Oscar has done, he has done of his own free will."

"What Oscar has done," I rejoined, "is lamentably foolish, cruelly wrong. Still, perverted as it is, there is something generous, something noble, in the motive which has led him. As for your conduct in this matter, I see nothing but what is mean, nothing but what is cowardly, in the motive which has led you."

He started to his feet, and flung his cigar into the empty fireplace.

"Madame Pratolungo," he said, "I have not the honor of knowing anything of your family. I can't call a woman to account for insulting me. Do you happen to have any man related to you, in or out of England?"

"I happen to have what will do equally well on this occasion," I replied. "I have a hearty contempt for threats of all sorts, and a steady resolution in me to say what I think."

He walked to the door, and opened it.

"I decline to give you the opportunity of saying anything more," he rejoined. "I beg to leave you in possession of the room, and to wish you good evening."

He opened the door. I had entered the house, armed in my own mind with a last desperate resolve, only to be communicated to him, or to anybody, in the final emergency and at the eleventh hour. The time had come for saying what I had hoped with my whole heart to have left unsaid.

I rose on my side, and stopped him as he was leaving the room.

"Return to your chair and your book," I said. "Our interview is at an end. In leaving the house, I have one last word to say. You are wasting your time in remaining at Dimchurch."

"I am the best judge of that," he answered, making way for me to go out.

"Pardon me, you are not in a position to judge at all. You don't know what I mean to do as soon as I get back to the rectory."

He instantly changed his position; placing himself in the doorway so as to prevent me from leaving the room.

"What do you mean to do?" he asked, keeping his eyes attentively fixed on mine.

"I mean to force you to leave Dimchurch."

He laughed insolently. I went on as quietly as before. "You have personated your brother to Lucilla this morning," I said. "You have done that, Mr. Nugent Dubourg, for the last time."

"Have I? Who will prevent me from doing it again?"

"I will."

This time he took it seriously.

"You?" he said. "How are you to control me, if you please?"

"I can control you through Lucilla. When I get back to the rectory, I can, and will, tell Lucilla the truth."

He started—and instantly recovered himself.

"You forget something, Madame Pratolungo. You forget what the surgeon in attendance on her has told us."

"I remember it perfectly. If we say or do anything to agitate his patient, in her present state, the surgeon refuses to answer for the consequences."

"Well?"

"Well—between the alternative of leaving you free to break both their hearts, and the alternative of setting the surgeon's warning at defiance—dreadful as the choice is, my choice is made. I tell you to your face, I would rather see Lucilla blind again than see her your wife."

His estimate of the strength of the position on his side, had been necessarily based on one conviction—the conviction that Grosse's professional authority would tie my tongue. I had scattered his calculations to the winds. He turned so deadly pale that, dim as the light was, I could see the change in his face.

"I don't believe you!" he said.

"Present yourself at the rectory tomorrow," I answered—"and you will see. I have no more to say to you. Let me by."

You may suppose I was only trying to frighten him. I was doing nothing of the sort. Blame me, or approve of me, as you please, I was expressing the resolution which I had in my mind when I spoke. Whether my courage would have held out through the walk from Browndown to the rectory—whether I should have shrunk from it when I actually found myself in Lucilla's presence—is more than I can venture to decide. All I say is that I did, in my desperation, positively mean doing it, at the moment when I threatened to do it—and that Nugent Dubourg heard something in my voice which told him I was in earnest.

"You fiend!" he burst out, stepping close up to me with a look of fury.

The whole passionate fervour of the love that the miserable wretch felt for her, shook him from head to foot, as his horror of me found its way to expression in those two words.

"Spare me your opinion of my character," I said. "I don't expect you to understand the motives of an honest woman. For the last time, let me by!"

Instead of letting me by, he locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. That done, he pointed to the chair that I had left.

"Sit down," he said, with a sudden sinking in his voice which implied a sudden change in his temper. "Let me have a minute to myself."

I returned to my place. He took his own chair on the other side of the table, and covered his face with his hands. We waited awhile in silence. I looked at him, once or twice, as the minutes followed each other. The shaded lamp-light glistened dimly on something between his fingers. I rose softly, and stretched across the table to look closer. Tears! On my word of honor, tears forcing their way through his fingers, as he held them over his face! I had been on the point of speaking. I sat down again in silence.

"Say what you want of me. Tell me what you wish me to do." Those were his first words. He spoke them without moving his hands; so quietly, so sadly, with such hopeless sorrow, such uncomplaining resignation in his voice, that I, who had entered that room, hating him, rose again, and went round to his chair. I—who a minute ago, if I had had the strength, would have struck him down on the floor at my feet—laid my hand on his shoulder, pitying him from the bottom of my heart. That is what women are! There is a specimen of their sense, firmness, and self-control!

"Be just, Nugent," I said. "Be honorable. Be all that I once thought you. I want no more."

He dropped his arms on the table: his head fell on them, and he burst into a fit of crying. It was so like his brother, that I could almost have fancied I, too, had mistaken one of them for the other. "Oscar over again," I thought to myself, "on the first day when I spoke to him in this very room!"

"Come!" I said, when he was quieter. "We shall end in understanding each other and respecting each other after all."

He irritably shook my hand off his shoulder, and turned his face away from the light.

"Don't talk of understanding me," he said. "Your sympathy is for Oscar. He is the victim; he is the martyr; he has all your consideration and all your pity. I am a coward; I am a villain; I have no honor and no heart. Tread Me under foot like a reptile. My misery is only what I deserve! Compassion is thrown away—isn't it?—on such a scoundrel as I am?"

I was sorely puzzled how to answer him. All that he had said against himself, I had thought of him in my own mind. And why not? He had behaved infamously—he was a fit object for righteous indignation. And yet—and yet—it is sometimes so very hard, however badly a man may have behaved, for women to hold out against forgiving him, when they know that a woman is at the bottom of it.

"Whatever I may have thought of you," I said, "it is still in your power, Nugent, to win back my old regard for you."

"Is it?" he answered scornfully. "I know better than that. You are not talking to Oscar now—you are talking to a man who has had some experience of women. I know how you all hold to your opinions because they are your opinions—without asking yourselves whether they are right or wrong. There are men who could understand me and pity me. No woman can do it. The best and cleverest among you don't know what love is—as a man feels it. It isn't the frenzy with You that it is with Us. It acknowledges restraints in a woman—it bursts through everything in a man. It robs him of his intelligence, his honor, his self-respect—it levels him with the brutes—it debases him into idiocy—it lashes him into madness. I tell you I am not accountable for my own actions. The kindest thing you could do for me would be to shut me up in a madhouse. The best thing I could do for myself would be to cut my throat.—Oh, yes! this is a shocking way of talking, isn't it? I ought to struggle against it—as you say. I ought to summon my self-control. Ha! ha! ha! Here is a clever woman—here is an experienced woman. And yet—though she has seen me in Lucilla's company hundreds of times—she has never once discovered the signs of a struggle in me! From the moment when I first saw that heavenly creature, it has been one long fight against myself, one infernal torment of shame and remorse; and this clever friend of mine has observed so little and knows so little, that she can only view my conduct in one light—it is the conduct of a coward and a villain!"

He got up, and took a turn in the room. I was—naturally, I think—a little irritated by his way of putting it. A man assuming to know more about love than a woman! Was there ever such a monstrous perversion of the truth as that? I appeal to the women!

"You ought to be the last person to blame me," I said. "I had too high an opinion of you to suspect what was going on. I will never make the same mistake again—I promise you that!"

He came back, and stood still in front of me, looking me hard in the face.

"Do you really mean to say you saw nothing to set you thinking, on the day when I first met her?" he asked. "You were there in the room—didn't you see that she struck me dumb? Did you notice nothing suspicious at a later time? When I was suffering martyrdom, if I only looked at her—was there nothing to be seen in me which told its own tale?"

"I noticed that you were never at your ease with her," I replied. "But I liked you and trusted you—and I failed to understand it. That's all."

"Did you fail to understand everything that followed? Didn't I speak to her father? Didn't I try to hasten Oscar's marriage?"

It was true. He had tried.

"When we first talked of his telling Lucilla of the discoloration of his face, did I not agree with you that he ought to put himself right with her, in his own interests?"

True again. Impossible to deny that he had sided with my view.

"When she all but found it out for herself, whose influence was used to make him own it? Mine! What did I do, when he tried to confess it, and failed to make her understand him? what did I do when she first committed the mistake of believing me to be the disfigured man?"

The audacity of that last question fairly took away my breath. "You cruelly helped to deceive her," I answered indignantly. "You basely encouraged your brother in his fatal policy of silence."

He looked at me with an angry amazement on his side which more than equaled the angry amazement on mine.

"So much for the delicate perception of a woman!" he exclaimed. "So much for the wonderful tact which is the peculiar gift of the sex! You can see no motive but a bad motive in my sacrificing myself for Oscar's sake?"

I began to discern faintly that there might have been another than a bad motive for his conduct. But—well! I dare say I was wrong; I resented the tone he was taking with me; I would have owned I had made a mistake to anybody else in the world; I wouldn't own it to him. There!

"Look back for one moment," he resumed, in quieter and gentler tones. "See how hardly you have judged me! I seized the opportunity—I swear to you this is true—I seized the opportunity of making myself an object of horror to her, the moment I heard of the mistake that she had made. I felt in myself that I was growing less and less capable of avoiding her, and I caught at the chance of making her avoid me; I did that—and I did more! I entreated Oscar to let me leave Dimchurch. He appealed to me, in the name of our love for each other, to remain. I couldn't resist him. Where do you see signs of the conduct of a scoundrel in all this? Would a scoundrel have betrayed himself to you a dozen times over—as I did in that talk of ours in the summer-house? I remember saying in so many words, I wished I had never come to Dimchurch. What reason but one could there be for my saying that? How is it that you never even asked me what I meant?"

"You forget," I interposed, "that I had no opportunity of asking you. Lucilla interrupted us, and diverted my attention to other things. What do you mean by putting me on my defence in this way?" I went on, more and more irritated by the tone he was taking with me. "What right have you to judge my conduct?"

He looked at me with a kind of vacant surprise.

"Have I been judging your conduct?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Perhaps I was thinking, if you had seen my infatuation in time you might have checked it in time. No!" he exclaimed, before I could answer him. "Nothing could have checked it—nothing will cure it but my death. Let us try to agree. I beg your pardon if I have offended you. I am willing to take a just view of your conduct. Will you take a just view of mine?"

I tried hard to take a just view. Though I resented his manner of speaking to me, I nevertheless secretly felt for him, as I have confessed. Still I could not forget that he had attempted to attract to himself Lucilla's first look, on the day when she tried her sight—that he had personated his brother to Lucilla that very morning—that he had suffered his brother to go away heart-broken, a voluntary exile from all that he held dear. No! I could feel for him, but I could not take a just view of him. I sat down, and said nothing.

He returned to the question between us; treating me with the needful politeness, when he spoke next. For all that, he alarmed me, by what he now said, as he had not alarmed me yet.

"I repeat what I have already told you," he proceeded. "I am no longer accountable for what I do. If I know anything of myself, I believe it will be useless to trust me in the future. While I am capable of speaking the truth, let me tell it. Whatever happens at a later time—remember this, I have honestly made a clean breast of it to-night."

"Stop!" I cried. "I don't understand your reckless way of talking. Every man is accountable for what he does."

He checked me there by an impatient wave of his hand.

"Keep your opinion; I don't dispute it. You will see; you will see.—Madame Pratolungo, the day when we had that private talk of ours in the rectory summer-house, marks a memorable date in my calendar. My last honest struggle to be true to my poor Oscar ended with that day. The efforts I have made since then have been little better than mere outbreaks of despair. They have done nothing to help me against the passion that has become the one feeling and the one misery of my life. Don't talk of resistance. All resistance stops at a certain point. Since the time I have told you of, my resistance has reached its limits. You have heard how I struggled against temptation, as long as I could resist it. I have only to tell you how I have yielded to it now."

The reckless, shameless composure with which he said that, began to set me against him once more. The perpetual shifts and contradictions in him, bewildered and irritated me. Quicksilver itself seemed to be less slippery to lay hold of than this man.

"Do you remember the day," he asked, "when Lucilla lost her temper, and received you so rudely at your visit to Browndown?"

I made a sign in the affirmative.

"You spoke, a little while since, of my personating Oscar to her. I personated him, on the occasion I have just mentioned, for the first time. You were present and heard me. Did you care to speculate on the motives which made me impose myself on her as my brother?"

"As well as I can remember," I answered, "I made the first guess that occurred to me. I thought you were indulging in a moment's mischievous amusement at Lucilla's expense.

"I was indulging the passion that consumed me! I longed to feel the luxury of her touching me and being familiar with me, under the impression that I was Oscar. Worse even than that, I wanted to try how completely I could impose on her—how easily I might marry her, if I could only deceive you all, and take her away somewhere by herself. The devil was in possession of me. I don't know how it might have ended, if Oscar had not come in, and if Lucilla had not burst out as she did. She distressed me—she frightened me—she gave me back again to my better self. I rushed, without stopping to prepare her, into the question of her restoration to sight—as the only way of diverting her mind from the vile advantage that I had taken of her blindness. That night, Madame Pratolungo, I suffered pangs of self-reproach and remorse which would even have satisfied you. At the very next opportunity that offered, I made my atonement to Oscar. I supported his interests; I even put the words he was to say to Lucilla into his lips.

"When?" I broke in. "Where? How?"

"When the two surgeons had left us. In Lucilla's sitting-room. In the heat of the discussion whether she should submit to the operation at once—or whether she should marry Oscar first, and let Grosse try his experiment on her eyes at a later time. If you recall our conversation, you will remember that I did all I could to persuade Lucilla to marry my brother before Grosse tried his experiment on her sight. Quite useless! You threw all the weight of your influence into the opposite side of the scale. I failed. It made no difference. I had done what I had done in sheer despair: mere impulse—it didn't last. When the next temptation tried me, I behaved like a scoundrel—as you say."

"I have said nothing," I answered shortly.

"Very well—as you think, then. Did you suspect me at last—when we met in the village, yesterday? Surely, even your eyes must have seen through me on that occasion!"

I answered silently, by an inclination of my head. I had no wish to drift into another quarrel. Sorely as he was presuming on my endurance, I tried, in Lucilla's interests, to keep on friendly terms with him.

"You concealed it wonderfully well," he went on, "when I tried to find out whether you had, or had not discovered me. You virtuous people are not bad hands at deception, when it suits your interests to deceive. I needn't tell you what my temptation was yesterday. The first look of her eyes when they opened on the world; the first light of love and joy breaking on her heavenly face—what madness to expect me to let that look fall on another man, that light show itself to other eyes! No living being, adoring her as I adored her, would have acted otherwise than I did. I could have fallen down on my knees and worshipped Grosse, when he innocently proposed to me to take the very place in the room which I was determined to occupy. You saw what I had in my mind! You did your best—and did it admirably—to defeat me. Oh, you pattern people—you can be as shifty with your resources, when a cunning trick is to be played, as the worst of us! You saw how it ended. Fortune stood my friend at the eleventh hour; fortune can shine, like the sun, on the just and the unjust! I had the first look of her eyes! I felt the first light of love and joy in her face falling on me! I have had her arms round me, and her bosom on mine—"

I could endure it no longer.

"Open the door!" I said. "I am ashamed to be in the same room with you!"

"I don't wonder at it," he answered. "You may well be ashamed of me. I am ashamed of myself."

There was nothing cynical in his tone, nothing insolent in his manner. The same man who had just gloried in that abominable way, in his victory over innocence and misfortune, now spoke and looked like a man who was honestly ashamed of himself. If I could only have felt convinced that he was mocking me, or playing the hypocrite with me, I should have known what to do. But I say again—impossible as it seems—he was, beyond all doubt, genuinely penitent for what he had said, the instant after he had said it! With all my experience of humanity, and all my practice in dealing with strange characters, I stopped mid-way between Nugent and the locked door, thoroughly puzzled.

"Do you believe me?" he asked.

"I don't understand you," I answered.

He took the key of the door out of his pocket, and put it on the table—close to the chair from which I had just risen.

"I lose my head when I talk of her, or think of her," he went on. "I would give everything I possess not to have said what I said just now. No language you can use is too strong to condemn it. The words burst out of me: if Lucilla herself had been present, I couldn't have controlled them. Go, if you like. I have no right to keep you here, after behaving as I have done. There is the key, at your service. Only think first, before you leave me. You had something to propose when you came in. You might influence me—you might shame me into behaving like an honorable man. Do as you please. It rests with you."

Which was I, a good Christian? or a contemptible fool? I went back once more to my chair, and determined to give him a last chance.

"That's kind," he said. "You encourage me; you show me that I am worth trying again. I had a generous impulse in this room, yesterday. It might have been something better than an impulse—if I had not had another temptation set straight in my way."

"What temptation?" I asked.

"Oscar's letter has told you: Oscar himself put the temptation in my way. You must have seen it."

"I saw nothing of the sort."

"Doesn't he tell you that I offered to leave Dimchurch for ever? I meant it. I saw the misery in the poor fellow's face, when Grosse and I were leading Lucilla out of the room. With my whole heart, I meant it. If he had taken my hand, and had said Good-bye, I should have gone. He wouldn't take my hand. He insisted on thinking it over by himself. He came back, resolved to make the sacrifice, on his side——"

"Why did you accept the sacrifice?"

"Because he tempted me."

"Tempted you?"

"Yes! What else can you call it—when he offered to leave me free to plead my own cause with Lucilla? What else can you call it—when he showed me a future life, which was a life with Lucilla? Poor, dear, generous fellow, he tempted me to stay when he ought to have encouraged me to go. How could I resist him? Blame the passion that has got me body and soul: don't blame me!"

I looked at the book on the table—the book that he had been reading when I entered the room. These sophistical confidences of his were nothing but Rousseau at second hand. Good! If he talked false Rousseau, nothing was left for me but to talk genuine Pratolungo. I let myself go—I was just in the humour for it.

"How can a clever man like you impose on yourself in that way?" I said. "Your future with Lucilla? You have no future with Lucilla which is not shocking to think of. Suppose—you shall never do it, as long as I live—suppose you married her? Good heavens, what a miserable life it would be for both of you! You love your brother. Do you think you could ever really know a moment's peace, with one reflection perpetually forcing itself on your mind? 'I have cheated Oscar out of the woman whom he loved; I have wasted his life; I have broken his heart.' You couldn't look at her, you couldn't speak to her, you couldn't touch her, without feeling it all embittered by that horrible reproach. And she? What sort of wife would she make you, when she knew how you had got her? I don't know which of the two she would hate most—you or herself. Not a man would pass her in the street, who would not rouse the thought in her—'I wonder whether he has ever done anything as base as what my husband has done.' Not a married woman of her acquaintance, but would make her sick at heart with envy and regret. 'Whatever faults he may have, your husband hasn't won you as my husband won me.' You happy? Your married life endurable? Come! I have saved a few pounds, since I have been with Lucilla. I will lay you every farthing I possess, you two would be separated by mutual consent before you had been six months man and wife. Now, which will you do? Will you start for the Continent, or stay here? Will you bring Oscar back, like an honorable man? or let him go, and disgrace yourself for ever?"

His eyes sparkled; his color rose. He sprang to his feet, and unlocked the door. What was he going to do? To start for the Continent, or to turn me out of the house?

He called to the servant.

"James!"

"Yes, sir?"

"Make the house fast when Madame Pratolungo and I have left it. I am not coming back again."

"Sir!"

"Pack my portmanteau, and send it after me to-morrow, to Nagle's Hotel, London."

He closed the door again, and came back to me.

"You refused to take my hand when you came in," he said. "Will you take it now? I leave Browndown when you leave it; and I won't come back again till I bring Oscar with me.

"Both hands!" I exclaimed—and took him by both hands. I could say nothing more. I could only wonder whether I was waking or sleeping; fit to be put into an asylum, or fit to go at large?

"Come!" he said. "I will see you as far as the rectory gate.

"You can't go to-night," I answered. "The last train has left hours since."

"I can! I can walk to Brighton, and get a bed there, and leave for London to-morrow morning. Nothing will induce me to pass another night at Browndown. Stop! One question before I put the lamp out."

"What is it?"

"Did you do anything towards tracing Oscar, when you were in London to-day?"

"I went to a lawyer, and made what arrangements with him I could."

"Here is my pocket-book. Write me down his name and address."

I wrote them. He extinguished the lamp, and led me into the passage. The servant was standing there bewildered. "Good night, James. I am going to bring your master back to Browndown." With that explanation, he took up his hat and stick, and gave me his arm. The moment after, we were out in the dark valley, on our way to the village.

On the walk back to the rectory, he talked with a feverish volubility and excitement. Avoiding the slightest reference to the subject discussed at our strange and stormy interview, he returned, with tenfold confidence in himself, to his old boastful assertion of the great things he was going to do as a painter. The mission which called him to reconcile Humanity with Nature; the superb scale on which he proposed to interpret sympathetic scenery for the benefit of suffering mankind; the prime necessity of understanding him, not as a mere painter, but as Grand Consoler in Art—I had it all over again, by way of satisfying my mind as to his prospects and occupations in his future life. It was only when we stopped at the rectory-gate that he referred to what had passed between us—and even then, he only touched on the subject in the briefest possible way.

"Well?" he said. "Have I won back your old regard for me? Do you believe there is a fine side to be found in the nature of Nugent Dubourg? Man is a compound animal. You are a woman in ten thousand. Give me a kiss."

He kissed me, foreign fashion, on both cheeks.

"Now for Oscar!" he shouted cheerfully. He waved his hat, and disappeared in the darkness. I stood at the gate till the last rapid pit-pat of his feet died away in the silence of the night.

An indescribable depression seized on my spirits. I began to doubt him again, the instant I was alone.

"Is there a time coming," I asked myself, "when all that I have done to-night must be done over again?"

I opened the rectory-gate. Mr. Finch intercepted me before I could get round to our side of the house. He held up before me, in solemn triumph, a manuscript of many pages.

"My Letter," he said. "A Letter of Christian remonstrance, to Nugent Dubourg."

"Nugent Dubourg has left Dimchurch."

With that reply, I told the rector in as few words as possible how my visit to Browndown had ended.

Mr. Finch looked at his letter. All those pages of eloquence written for nothing? No! In the nature of things, that could not possibly be. "You have done very well, Madame Pratolungo," he remarked, in his most patronizing manner. "Very well indeed, all things considered. But, I don't think I shall act wisely if I destroy this." He carefully locked up his manuscript, and turned to me again with a mysterious smile. "I venture to think," said Mr. Finch with mock humility, "My Letter will be wanted. Don't let me discourage you about Nugent Dubourg. Only let me say:—Is he to be trusted?"

It was said by a fool: it would never have been said at all, if he had not written his wonderful letter. Still, it echoed, with a painful fidelity, the misgiving secretly present at that moment in my own mind—and, more yet, it echoed the misgiving in Nugent's mind, the doubt of himself which his own lips had confessed to me in so many words. I wished the rector good night, and went upstairs.

Lucilla was in bed and asleep, when I softly opened her door.

After looking for awhile at her lovely peaceful face, I was obliged to turn away. It was time I left the bedside, when the sight of her only made my spirits sink lower and lower. As I cast my last look at her before I closed the door, Mr. Finch's ominous question forced itself on me again. In spite of myself, I said to myself—

"Is he to be trusted?"



CHAPTER THE THIRTY-NINTH

She Learns to See

WITH the new morning, certain reflections found their way into my mind which were not of the most welcome sort. There was one serious element of embarrassment in my position towards Lucilla, which had not discovered itself to me when Nugent and I parted at the rectory gate.

Browndown was now empty. In the absence of both the brothers, what was I to say to Lucilla when the false Oscar failed to pay her his promised visit that day?

In what a labyrinth of lies had the first fatal suppression of the truth involved us all! One deception after another had been forced on us; one disaster after another had followed retributively as the result—and, now that I was left to deal single-handed with the hard necessities of our position, no choice seemed left to me but to go on deceiving Lucilla still! I was weary of it and ashamed of it. At breakfast-time, I evaded all further discussion of the subject, after I had first ascertained that Lucilla did not expect her visitor before the afternoon. For some time after breakfast, I kept her at the piano. When she wearied of music, and began to talk of Oscar once more, I put on my hat, and set forth on a domestic errand (of the kind usually entrusted to Zillah), solely for the purpose of keeping out of the way, and putting off to the last moment the hateful necessity of telling more lies. The weather stood my friend. It threatened to rain; and Lucilla, on that account, refrained from proposing to accompany me.

My errand took me to a farm-house on the road which led to Brighton. After settling my business, I prolonged my walk, though the rain was already beginning to fall. I had nothing on me that would spoil; and, in my present frame of mind, a wet gown was a preferable alternative to returning to the rectory.

After I had walked about a mile further on, the solitude of the road was enlivened by the appearance of an open carriage approaching me from the direction of Brighton. The hood was up to protect the person inside from the rain. The person looked out as I passed, and stopped the carriage in a voice which I instantly recognized as the voice of Grosse. Our gallant oculist insisted (in the state of the weather) on my instantly taking shelter by his side and returning with him to the house.

"This is an unexpected pleasure," I said. "I thought you had arranged not to see Lucilla again till the end of the week."

Grosse's eyes glared at me through his spectacles with a dignity and gravity worthy of Mr. Finch himself.

"Shall I tell you something?" he said. "You see sitting at your side a lost surgeon-optic. I shall die soon. Put on my tombs, if you please, The malady which killed this German mans was—Lofely Feench. When I am away from her—gif me your sympathies: I so much want it—I sweat with anxiousness for young Miss. Your damn-mess-fix about those two brodders is a sort of perpetual blisters on my mind. Instead of snoring peaceably all night in my nice big English beds, I roll wide awake on my pillows, fidgeting for Feench. I am here to-day before my time. For what? For to try her eyes—you think? Goot Madam, you think wrong! It is not her eyes which troubles me. Her eyes will do. It is You—and the odders at your rectory-place. You make me nervous-anxious about my patients. I am afraid some of you will let the mess-fix of those brodder-twins find its way to her pretty ears, and turn her poor little mind topsy-turvies when I am not near to see to it in time. Will you let her be comfortable-easy for two months more? Ach Gott! if I could only be certain-sure of that, I might leave those weak new eyes of hers to cure themselves, and go my ways back to London again."