"The servant is no doubt waiting down-stairs," I said. "Go on."
"But for that good creature," Lucilla resumed, "I should never have got here. She brought me your letter, and read it to me, and wrote my reply. I arranged with her to slip out at the first opportunity. One chance was in our favor--we had only the cousin to keep an eye on us. Oscar was not in the house."
She suddenly checked herself at the last word. A slight sound at the lower end of the room, which had passed unnoticed by me, had caught her delicate ear, "What is that noise?" she asked. "Anybody in the room with us?"
I looked up once more. While she was talking of the false Oscar, the true Oscar was standing listening to her, at the other end of the room.
When he discovered that I was looking at him, he entreated me by a gesture not to betray his presence. He had evidently heard what we had been saying to each other, before I detected him--for he touched his eyes, and lifted his hands pityingly in allusion to Lucilla's blindness. Whatever his mood might be, that melancholy discovery must surely have affected him--Lucilla's influence over him now, could only be an influence for good. I signed to him to remain--and told Lucilla that there was nothing to be alarmed about. She went on.
"Oscar left us for London early this morning," she said. "Can you guess what he has gone for? He has gone to get the Marriage License--he has given notice of the marriage at the church. My last hope is in you. In spite of everything that I can say to him, he has fixed the day for the twenty-first--in two days more! I have done all I could to put it off; I have insisted on every possible delay. Oh, if you knew----!" Her rising agitation stifled her utterance at the moment. "I mustn't waste the precious minutes; I must get back before Oscar returns," she went on, rallying again. "Oh, my old friend, you are never at a loss; you always know what to do! Find me some way of putting off my marriage. Suggest something which will take them by surprise, and force them to give me time!"
I looked towards the lower end of the room. Listening in breathless interest, Oscar had noiselessly advanced half-way towards us. At a sign from me, he checked himself and came no farther.
"Do you really mean, Lucilla, that you no longer love him?" I said.
"I can tell you nothing about it," she answered--"except that some dreadful change has come over me. While I had my sight, I could partly account for it--I believed that the new sense had made a new being of me. But now I have lost my sight again--now I am once more what I have been all my life--still the same horrible insensibility possesses me. I have so little feeling for him, that I sometimes find it hard to persuade myself that he really is Oscar. You know how I used to adore him. You know how enchanted I should once have been to marry him. Think of what I must suffer, feeling towards him as I feel now!"
I looked up again. Oscar had stolen nearer; I could see his face plainly. The good influence of Lucilla was beginning to do its good work! I saw the tears rising in his eyes; I saw love and pity taking the place of hatred and revenge. The Oscar of my old recollections was standing before me once more!
"I don't want to go away," Lucilla went on; "I don't want to leave him. All I ask for, is a little more time. Time must help me to get back again to my old self. My blind days have been the days of my whole life. Can a few weeks of sight have deprived me of the feelings which have been growing in me for years? I won't believe it! I can find my way about the house; I can tell things by my touch; I can do all that I did in my blindness, just as well as ever, now I am blind again. The feeling for him will come back to me like the rest. Only give me time! only give me time!"
At the last word, she started to her feet in sudden alarm. "There is some one in the room," she said. "Some one who is crying! Who is it?"
Oscar was close to us. The tears were falling fast over his cheeks--the one faint sobbing breath which had escaped him had caught my ear as well as Lucilla's. I took his hand in one of my hands; and I took Lucilla's hand in the other. For good or for evil, the result rested with God's mercy. The time had come.
"Who is it?" Lucilla repeated impatiently.
"Try if you can tell, my love, without asking me."
With those words, I put her hand in Oscar's hand--and stood close, watching her face.
For one awful moment, when she first felt the familiar touch, the blood left her cheeks. Her blind eyes dilated fearfully. She stood petrified. Then, with a long low cry--a cry of breathless rapture--she flung her arms passionately round his neck. The life flowed back into her face; her lovely smile just trembled on her parted lips; her breath came faint and quick and fluttering. In soft tones of ecstasy, with her lips on his cheek, she murmured the delicious words:
"Oh, Oscar! I know you once more!"
CHAPTER THE FIFTIETH
The End of the Journey
A LITTLE interval of time elapsed.
Her first exquisite sense of the recognition by touch had passed away. Her mind had recovered its balance. She separated herself from Oscar, and turned to me, with the one inevitable question which I knew must follow the joining of their hands.
"What does it mean?"
The exposure of Nugent's perfidy; the revelation of the fatal secret of Oscar's face; and, last not least, the defence of my own conduct towards her, were all comprehended in the answer for which that question called. As carefully, as delicately, as mercifully as I could, I disclosed to her the whole truth. How the shock affected her, she did not tell me at the time, and has never told me since. With her hand in Oscar's hand, with her face hidden on Oscar's breast, she listened; not once interrupting me, from first to last, by so much as a single word. Now and then, I saw her tremble; now and then I heard her sigh heavily. That was all. It was only when I had ended--it was only after a long interval during which Oscar and I watched her in speechless anxiety--that she slowly lifted her head and broke the silence.
"Thank God," we heard her say to herself fervently--"Thank God, I am blind."
Those were her first words. They filled me with horror. I cried out to her to recall them.
She quietly laid her head back on Oscar's breast.
"Why should I recall them?" she asked. "Do you think I wish to see him disfigured as he is now? No! I wish to see him--and I do see him!--as my fancy drew his picture in the first days of our love. My blindness is my blessing. It has given me back my old delightful sensation when I touch him; it keeps my own beloved image of him--the one image I care for--unchanged and unchangeable. You will persist in thinking that my happiness depends on my sight. I look back with horror at what I suffered when I had my sight--my one effort is to forget that miserable time. Oh, how little you know of me! Oh, what a shock it would be to me, if I saw him as you see him! Try to understand me, and you won't talk of my loss--you will talk of my gain."
"Your gain?" I repeated.