"I tell you again I am sensible of a difference between them," she repeated—"though you don't seem to believe me."
I interpreted this uneasy reiteration as meaning that she was rather trying to convince herself than to convince me. In her blind condition, it was doubly and trebly embarrassing not to know one brother from the other. I understood her unwillingness to acknowledge this—I felt (in her position) how it would have irritated me. She was waiting—impatiently waiting—for me to say something on my side. I am, as you know already, an indiscreet woman. I innocently said one of my rash things.
"I believe whatever you tell me, my dear," I answered. "You can find out a difference between them, I have no doubt. Still, I own I should like to see it put to the proof."
Her color rose. "How?" she asked abruptly.
"Try your touch alternately on both their faces," I suggested, "without knowing beforehand which position they each of them occupy. Make three trials—leaving them to change their places or not, between each trial, just as they please. If you guess which is which correctly three times following, there will be the proof that you can really lay your hand on a difference between them."
Lucilla shrank from accepting the challenge. She drew back a step, and silently shook her head. Nugent, who had overheard me, turned round suddenly from the window, and supported my proposal.
"A capital notion!" he burst out. "Let's try it! You don't object, Oscar—do you?"
"I object?" cried Oscar—amazed at the bare idea of his opposing any assertion of his will to the assertion of his brother's will. "If Lucilla is willing, I say Yes, with all my heart."
The two brothers approached us, arm in arm. Lucilla, very reluctantly, allowed herself to be persuaded into trying the experiment. Two chairs, exactly alike, were placed in front of her. At a sign from Nugent, Oscar silently took the chair on her right. By this arrangement, the hand which she had used in touching Nugent's face, would be now the hand that she would employ in touching Oscar's face. When they were both seated, I announced that we were ready. Lucilla placed her hands on their faces, right and left, without the faintest idea in her mind of the positions which the two relatively occupied.
After first touching them with both hands, and both together, she tried them separately next, beginning with Oscar, and using her right hand only. She left him for Nugent; again using her right hand—then came back to him again—then returned to Nugent—hesitated—-decided—tapped Nugent lightly on the head.