He got up, and took a turn in the room. I was—naturally, I think—a little irritated by his way of putting it. A man assuming to know more about love than a woman! Was there ever such a monstrous perversion of the truth as that? I appeal to the women!
"You ought to be the last person to blame me," I said. "I had too high an opinion of you to suspect what was going on. I will never make the same mistake again—I promise you that!"
He came back, and stood still in front of me, looking me hard in the face.
"Do you really mean to say you saw nothing to set you thinking, on the day when I first met her?" he asked. "You were there in the room—didn't you see that she struck me dumb? Did you notice nothing suspicious at a later time? When I was suffering martyrdom, if I only looked at her—was there nothing to be seen in me which told its own tale?"
"I noticed that you were never at your ease with her," I replied. "But I liked you and trusted you—and I failed to understand it. That's all."
"Did you fail to understand everything that followed? Didn't I speak to her father? Didn't I try to hasten Oscar's marriage?"
It was true. He had tried.
"When we first talked of his telling Lucilla of the discoloration of his face, did I not agree with you that he ought to put himself right with her, in his own interests?"
True again. Impossible to deny that he had sided with my view.
"When she all but found it out for herself, whose influence was used to make him own it? Mine! What did I do, when he tried to confess it, and failed to make her understand him? what did I do when she first committed the mistake of believing me to be the disfigured man?"