"Are you sure, Lucilla, that you are blind for life?"
A dead silence followed the utterance of those words.
I brushed away the tears from my eyes, and looked up.
Oscar had been—as I supposed—holding her in his arms, silently soothing her, when his brother spoke. At the moment when I saw her, she had just detached herself from him. She advanced a step, towards the part of the room in which Nugent stood—and stopped, with her face turned towards him. Every faculty in her seemed to be suspended by the silent passage into her mind of the new idea that he had called up. Through childhood, girlhood, womanhood—never once, waking or dreaming, had the prospect of restoration to sight presented itself within her range of contemplation, until now. Not a trace was left in her countenance of the indignation which Nugent had roused in her, hardly more than a moment since. Not a sign appeared indicating a return of the nervous suffering which the sense of his presence had inflicted on her, earlier in the day. The one emotion in possession of her was astonishment—astonishment that had struck her dumb; astonishment that waited, helplessly and mechanically, to hear more.
I observed Oscar, next. His eyes were fixed on Lucilla—absorbed in watching her. He spoke to Nugent, without looking at him; animated, as it seemed, by a vague fear for Lucilla, which was slowly developing into a vague fear for himself.
"Mind what you are doing!" he said. "Look at her, Nugent—look at her."
Nugent approached his brother, circuitously, so as to place Oscar between Lucilla and himself.
"Have I offended you?" he asked.
Oscar looked at him in surprise. "Offended with you," he answered, "after what you have forgiven, and what you have suffered, for my sake?"
"Still," persisted the other, "there is something wrong."