“Now do you recognise it?” asked his father.
“As a human finger,” he answered evasively; “nothing more.”
“Nothing more! And you cannot tell to whom it once belonged.”
“Indeed I cannot—how should I know?”
“Better than anybody else. Alas, it is—it was—your brother’s!”
“My brother’s!” exclaimed Nigel, pretending both surprise and emotion—neither of which he felt.
“Yes; look at that scar. You surely remember that?”
Another pretended surprise, another feigned emotion, was all the answer.
“I do not wish to reproach you for it,” said the General, speaking of the scar; “it is a thing that should be forgotten, and has nothing to do with the misfortune now threatening us. What you see there was once poor Henry’s finger.”
“But how do you know, father? How came it here? How has it been cut off? And who—”