"There!—I am gone blind again," exclaimed the earl, suddenly, and raised his trembling hands to his eyes.
"So you knew it all?" said he, presently, tremulously removing his hands, and looking up, as if the momentary obscuration of his sight had ceased.
"Oh yes, papa, of course! How could I help it? Try to go to sleep again, dear papa." There was a faint dash of petulance in her manner.
They were at terrible cross purposes.
His eye remained fixed steadily on that of his daughter. "Is it not horrible, Cecilia?" said he, with a shudder.
"Dear papa, I don't know what you mean," replied Cecilia, quite startled by the tone of his voice, and the look of his eye. There was nothing wild or unnatural about it. The eye seemed that of a man in his full senses, but horrified by some frightful recollection or other.
"I thought it would have killed her," he muttered, closing his eyes, while a faint flush came over his face, but that of Lady Cecilia turned deadly pale.
"Don't speak again, dear," whispered Miss Macspleuchan, herself a little startled by the earl's manner—"he's wandering—he'll go to sleep presently."
"Yes, in my grave, madam," replied the earl, solemnly, in a hollow tone—at the same time turning towards Miss Macspleuchan an eye which suddenly blanched her face—"but even there I shall not forget!" She gazed at him in silence, and apprehensively, trembling from head to foot.