"There is one thing I believe in," I said cheerfully. "I believe in the breeze on the hills. Come for a walk!"
She shrank closer into her corner and shook her head.
"Let me be!" she broke out impatiently. "Leave me by myself!" She rose, repenting the words the moment they were uttered—she put her arm round my neck, and kissed me. "I didn't mean to speak so harshly," said the gentle affectionate creature. "Sister! my heart is heavy. My life to come never looked so dark to my blind eyes as it looks now." A tear dropped from those poor sightless eyes on my cheek. She turned her head aside abruptly. "Forgive me," she murmured, "and let me go." Before I could answer, she hurried away to hide herself in her room. The sweet girl! How you would have pitied her—how you would have loved her!
I went out alone for my walk. She had not infected me with her superstitious foreboding of ill things to come. But there was one sad word that she had said, in which I could not but agree. After what I had witnessed in that room, the wedding-day did indeed look further off than ever.
CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH
Family Troubles
IN four or five days more, Lucilla's melancholy doubts about Oscar were confirmed. He was attacked by a second fit.
The promised consultation with the physician from Brighton took place. Our new doctor did not encourage us to hope. The second fit following so close on the first was, in his opinion, a bad sign. He gave general directions for the treatment of Oscar; and left him to decide for himself whether he would or would not try change of scene. No change, the physician appeared to think, would exert any immediate influence on the recurrence of the epileptic attacks. The patient's general health might be benefited, and that was all. As for the question of the marriage, he declared without hesitation that we must for the present dismiss all consideration of it from our minds.
Lucilla received the account of what passed at the visit of the doctors with a stubborn resignation which it distressed me to see. "Remember what I told you when the first attack seized him," she said. "Our summer-time is ended; our winter is come."