He settled himself wearily in his chair, and referred, in a softened and saddened tone, to that private conversation of his with Lucilla, at Ramsgate, which has already been reported in the Journal. I was now informed, for the first time, of those changes in her sensations and in her ways of thinking which had so keenly vexed and mortified her. I heard of the ominous absence of the old thrill of pleasure, when Nugent took her hand on meeting her at the seaside—I heard how bitterly his personal appearance had disappointed her (when she had seen his features in detail) by comparison with the charming ideal picture which she had formed of her lover in the days of her blindness: those happier days, as she had called them, when she was Poor Miss Finch.
"Surely," I said, "all the old feelings will come back to her when she sees Oscar?"
"They will never come back to her—no, not if she sees fifty Oscars!"
He was beginning to frighten me, or to irritate me—I can hardly say which. I only know that I persisted in disputing with him. "When she sees the true man," I went on, "do you mean to say she will feel the same disappointment——?"
I could get no farther than that. He cut me short there, without ceremony.
"You foolish womans!" he interposed, "she will feel more than the same. I have told you already it was one enormous disappointments to her when she saw the handsome brodder with the fair complexions. Ask your own self what it will be when she sees the ugly brodder with the blue face. I tell you this!—she will think your true man the worst impostor of the two."
There I indignantly contradicted him.
"His face may be a disappointment to her," I said—"I own that. But there it will end. Her hand will tell her, when he takes it, that there is no impostor deceiving her this time."
"Her hand will tell her nothing—no more than yours. I had not so much hard hearts in me as to say that to her, when she asked me. I say it to you. Hold your tongue and listen. All those thrill-tingles that she once had when he touched her, belong to anodder time—the time gone-by when her sight was in her fingers and not in her eyes. With those fine-superfine-feelings of the days when she was blind, she pays now for her grand new privilege of opening her eyes on the world. (And worth the price too!) Do you understand yet? It is a sort of swop-bargain between Nature and this poor girls of ours. I take away your eyes—I give you your fine touch. I give you your eyes—I take away your fine touch. Soh! that is plain. You see now."
I was too mortified and too miserable to answer him. Through all our later troubles, I had looked forward so confidently to Oscar's re-appearance as the one sufficient condition on which Lucilla's happiness would be certainly restored! What had become of my anticipations now? I sat silent; staring in stupid depression at the pattern of the carpet. Grosse took out his watch.