She started back a step. Submissive Oscar was taking a peremptory tone with her for the first time in his life. Submissive Oscar, instead of giving her time to speak, sternly went on.
"Madame Pratolungo has made her excuses to you. You ought to receive them; you ought to reciprocate them. It is distressing to see you and hear you. You are behaving ungratefully to your best friend."
She raised her face, she raised her hands, in blank amazement: she looked as if she distrusted her own ears.
"Oscar!" she exclaimed.
"Here I am," said Oscar, opening the door at the same moment.
She turned like lightning towards the place from which he had spoken. She detected the deception which Nugent had practiced on her, with a cry of indignation that rang through the room.
Oscar ran to her in alarm. She thrust him back violently.
"A trick!" she cried. "A mean, vile, cowardly trick played upon my blindness! Oscar! your brother has been imitating you; your brother has been speaking to me in your voice. And that woman who calls herself my friend—that woman stood by and heard him, and never told me. She encouraged it: she enjoyed it. The wretches! take me away from them. They are capable of any deceit. She always hated you, dear, from the first—she took up with your brother the moment he came here. When you marry me, it mustn't be at Dimchurch; it must be in some place they don't know of. There is a conspiracy between them against you and against me. Beware of them! beware of them! She said I should have fallen in love with your brother, if I had met him first. There is a deeper meaning in that, my love, than you can see. It means that they will part us if they can. Ha! I hear somebody moving! Has he changed places with you? Is it you whom I am speaking to now? Oh, my blindness! my blindness! Oh, God, of all your creatures, the most helpless, the most miserable, is the creature who can't see!"
I never heard anything in all my life so pitiable and so dreadful as the frantic suspicion and misery which tore their way out from her, in those words. She cut me to the heart. I had spoken rashly—I had behaved badly—but had I deserved this? No! no! no! I had not deserved it. I threw myself into a chair, and burst out crying. My tears scalded me; my sobs choked me. If I had had poison in my hand, I would have drunk it—I was so furious and so wretched: so hurt in my honor, so wounded at my heart.
The only voice that answered her was Nugent's. Reckless what the consequences might be—speaking, in his own proper person, from the opposite end of the room—he asked the all-important question which no human being had ever put to her yet.