But, I grieve to say, I have something unpleasant to add. While she was making her excuses to me, and speaking in the sensible and satisfactory terms which I have just repeated, I noticed a curious underlying embarrassment in her manner, entirely unlike any previous embarrassment which had ever intruded itself between us. And, stranger still, on the first occasion when Zillah came into the room, while I was in it, I observed that Lucilla's embarrassment was reflected (when the old woman spoke to me) in the face and manner of Lucilla's nurse.
But one conclusion could possibly follow from what I saw:—they were both concealing something from me; and they were both more or less ashamed of what they were doing.
Somewhere—not very far back in these pages—I have said of myself that I am not by nature a woman who is easily ready to suspect others. On this very account, when I find suspicion absolutely forced on me—as it was now—I am apt to fly into the opposite extreme. In the present case, I fixed on the person to suspect—all the more readily from having been slow to suspect him in bygone days. "In some way or other," I said to myself, "Nugent Dubourg is at the bottom of this."
Was he communicating with her privately, in the name and in the character of Oscar?
The bare idea of it hurried me headlong into letting her know that I had noticed the change in her.
"Lucilla!" I said. "Has anything happened?"
"What do you mean?" she asked coldly.
"I fancy I see some change——" I began.
"I don't understand you," she answered, walking away from me as she spoke.
I said no more. If our intimacy had been less close and less affectionate, I might have openly avowed to her what was passing in my mind. But how could I say to Lucilla, You are deceiving me? It would have been the end of our sisterhood—the end of our friendship. When confidence is withdrawn between two people who love each other—everything is withdrawn. They are on the footing of strangers from that moment, and must stand on ceremony. Delicate minds will understand why I accepted the check she had administered to me, and said no more.