"I know! I know! Oscar is worse than a child. I am beginning to lose all patience with him."
"I am sorry to hear you say that, Nugent. You have borne with him so kindly thus far—surely you can make allowances for him to-day? His whole future may depend on what happens in Lucilla's sitting-room a few hours hence."
"He is making a mountain out of a mole-hill—and so are you."
Those words were spoken bitterly—almost rudely. I answered sharply on my side.
"You are the last person living who has any right to say that. Oscar is in a false position towards Lucilla, with your knowledge and consent. In your brother's interests, you agreed to the fraud that has been practiced on her. In your brother's interests, again, you are asked to leave Dimchurch. Why do you refuse?"
"I refuse, because I have come round to your way of thinking. What did you say of Oscar and of me, in the summer-house? You said we were taking a cruel advantage of Lucilla's blindness. You were right. It was cruel not to have told her the truth. I won't be a party to concealing the truth from her any longer! I refuse to persist in deceiving her—in meanly deceiving her—on the day when she recovers her sight!"
It is entirely beyond my power to describe the tone in which he made that reply. I can only declare that it struck me dumb for the moment. I drew a step nearer to him. With vague misgivings in me, I looked him searchingly in the face. He looked back at me, without shrinking.
"Well?" he asked—with a hard smile which defied me to put him in the wrong.
I could discover nothing in his face—I could only follow my instincts as a woman. Those instincts warned me to accept his explanation.
"I am to understand then that you have decided on staying here?" I said.