"You had bitterly disappointed me," I said. "You had shown no sympathy with my eagerness to be restored to the blessing of sight. You made objections and started difficulties. I recollect speaking to you with some of the bitterness that I felt—blaming you for not believing in my future as I believed in it, and hoping as I hoped—and then leaving you, and locking myself up in my own room."
In those terms, I satisfied him that my memory of the events of that day was as clear as his own. He listened without making any remark, and went on when I had done.
"Madame Pratolungo shared your hard opinion of me, on that occasion," he proceeded; "and expressed it in infinitely stronger terms. She betrayed herself to you in the rectory garden. She betrayed herself to me, after you had left us together in the sitting-room. Her hasty temper again, beyond all doubt! I quite agree with you. What she said to me in your absence, she would never have said if she had been mistress of herself."
I began to feel a little startled. "How is it that you now tell me of this for the first time?" I said. "Were you afraid of distressing me?"
"I was afraid of losing you," he answered.
Hitherto, I had kept my arm in his. I drew it out now. If his reply meant anything, it meant that he had once thought me capable of breaking faith with him. He saw that I was hurt.
"Remember," he said, "that I had unhappily offended you that day, and that you have not heard yet what Madame Pratolungo had the audacity to say to me under those circumstances."
"What did she say to you?"
"This:—'It would have been a happier prospect for Lucilla, if she had been going to marry your brother, instead of marrying you.' I repeat literally: those were the words."
I could no more believe it of her than I could have believed it of myself.