I had plenty of time to compose myself, and to caution Zillah (who read your letter to me), before we met for the first time that day. On the previous day, I had felt hurt and offended with her for the manner in which she accounted for your absence from Browndown. I thought she was not treating me with the same confidence which I should have placed in her, if our positions had been reversed. When I next saw her, having your warning in my mind, I made my excuses, and said what I thought she would expect me to say, under the circumstances. In my excitement and my wretchedness, I daresay I over-acted my part. At any rate, I roused the suspicion in her that something was wrong. She not only asked me if anything had happened, she went the length of saying, in so many words, that she thought she saw a change in me. I stopped it there, by declaring that I did not understand her. She must have seen that I was not telling the truth: she must have known as well as I knew that I was concealing something from her. For all that, not one word more escaped her lips. A proud delicacy--I saw it as plainly in her face, as I now see you--a proud delicacy silenced her; she looked wounded and hurt. I have been thinking of that look, since I have been here. I have asked myself (what did not occur to me at the time) if a false woman, who knew herself to be guilty, would have behaved in that way? Surely a false woman would have set her wits against mine, and have tried to lead me into betraying to her what discoveries I had really made? Oscar! that delicate silence, that wounded look, will plead for her when I think of her in her absence! I can not feel as satisfied as I once did, that she is the abominable creature you declare her to be. I know you are incapable of deceiving me--I know you believe what you say. But is it not possible that appearances have misled you? Can you really be sure that you have not made some dreadful mistake?"
Without answering me, he suddenly stopped at a seat under the stone parapet of the pier, and signed to me to sit down by him. I obeyed. Instead of looking at me, he kept his head turned away; looking out over the sea. I could not make him out. He perplexed--he almost alarmed me.
"Have I offended you?" I asked.
He turned towards me again, as abruptly as he had turned away. His eyes wandered; his face was pale.
"You are a good generous creature," he said, in a confused hasty way. "Let us talk of something else."
"No!" I answered. "I am too deeply interested in knowing the truth to talk of anything else."
His color changed again at that. His face flushed; he gave a heavy sigh as one does sometimes, when one is making a great effort.
"You will have it?" he said.
"I will have it?"
He rose again. The nearer he was to telling me all that he had kept concealed from me thus far, the harder it seemed to be to him to say the first words.
"Do you mind walking on again?" he asked.
I silently rose on my side, and put my arm in his. We walked on slowly towards the end of the pier. Arrived there, he stood still, and spoke those hard first words--looking out over the broad blue waters: not looking at me.
"I won't ask you to take anything for granted, on my assertion only," he began. "The woman's own words, the woman's own actions, shall prove her guilty."
I interrupted him by a question.
"Tell me one thing," I said. "What first made you suspect her?"
"You first made me suspect her, by what you said of her at Browndown," he answered. "Now carry your memory back to the time I have already mentioned in my letter--when she betrayed herself to you in the rectory garden. Is it true that she said you would have fallen in love with Nugent, if you had met him first instead of me?"
"It is true that she said it," I answered. "At a moment," I added, "when her temper had got the better of her--and when mine had got the better of me."
"Advance the hour a little," he went on, "to the time when she followed you to Browndown. Was she still out of temper, when she made her excuses to you?"
"No."
"Did she interfere, when Nugent took advantage of your blindness to make you believe you were talking to me?"
"No."
"Was she out of temper then?"
I still defended her. "She might well have been angry," I said. "She had made her excuses to me in the kindest manner; and I had received them with the most unpardonable rudeness."
My defence produced no effect on him. He summed it up coolly so far. "She compared me disadvantageously with Nugent; and she allowed Nugent to personate me in speaking to you, without interfering to stop it. In both these cases, her temper excuses and accounts for her conduct. Very good. We may, or may not, differ so far. Before we go farther, let us--if we can--agree on one unanswerable fact. Which of us two brothers was her favorite, from the first?"
About that, there could be no doubt. I admitted at once that Nugent was her favorite. And more than this, I remembered accusing her myself of never having done justice to Oscar from the first.
[Note.--See the sixteenth chapter, and Madame Pratolungo's remark, warning you that you would hear of this circumstance again.--P.]
Oscar went on.
"Bear that in mind," he said. "And now let us get to the time when we were assembled in your sitting-room, to discuss the subject of the operation on your eyes. The question before us, as I remember it, was this. Were you to marry me, before the operation? Or were you to keep me waiting until the operation had been performed, and the cure was complete? How did Madame Pratolungo decide on that occasion? She decided against my interests; she encouraged you to delay our marriage."
I persisted in defending her. "She did that out of sympathy with me," I said.
He surprised me by again accepting my view of the matter, without attempting to dispute it.
"We will say she did it out of sympathy with you," he proceeded. "Whatever her motives might be, the result was the same. My marriage to you was indefinitely put off; and Madame Pratolungo voted for that delay."
"And your brother," I added, "took the other side, and tried to persuade me to marry you first. How can you reconcile that with what you have told me----"
He interposed before I could say more. "Don't bring my brother into the inquiry," he said. "My brother, at that time, could still behave like an honorable man, and sacrifice his own feelings to his duty to me. Let us strictly confine ourselves, for the present, to what Madame Pratolungo said and did. And let us advance again to a few minutes later on the same day, when our little domestic debate had ended. My brother was the first to go. Then, you retired, and left Madame Pratolungo and me alone in the room. Do you remember?"
I remembered perfectly.
"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.