第71章 CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH(2)

"I have heard people say that they have sometimes woke in the middle of the night, on a sudden, without any noise to disturb them. And they have fancied (without anything particular to justify it) that there was something, or somebody, in the dark room. Has that ever happened to you?"

"Certainly, my love.--It has happened to most people to fancy what you say, when their nerves are a little out of order."

"Very well. There is _my_ fancy, and there are _my_ nerves. When it happened to you, what did you do?"

"I struck a light, and satisfied myself that I was wrong."

"Suppose yourself without candle or matches, in a night without end, left alone with your fancy in the dark. There you have Me! It would not be easy, would it, to satisfy yourself; if you were in that helpless condition? You might suffer under it--very unreasonably--and yet very keenly for all that." She lifted her little cane, with a sad smile. "You might be almost as great a fool as poor Lucilla, and clear the air before you with this!"

The charm of her voice and her manner, added to the touching simplicity, the pathetic truth of those words. She made me realize, as I had never realized before, what it is to have, at one and the same time, the blessing of imagination, and the curse of blindness. For a moment, I was absorbed in my admiration and my love for her. For a moment, I forgot the terrible position in which we were all placed. She unconsciously recalled it to me when she spoke next.

"Perhaps I was wrong to force the truth out of Oscar?" she said, putting her arm again in mine, and walking on. "I might have reconciled myself to his brother, if I had never known what his brother was like. And yet I felt there was something strange in him, without being told, and without knowing what it was. There must have been a reason in me for the dislike that I felt for him from the first."

Those words appeared to me to indicate the state of mind which had led to Lucilla's deplorable mistake. I cautiously put some questions to her to test the correctness of my own idea.

"You spoke just now of forcing the truth out of Oscar," I said, "What made you suspect that he was concealing the truth from you?"

"He was so strangely embarrassed and confused," she answered. "Anybody in my place would have suspected him of concealing the truth."

So far the answer was conclusive.

"And how came you to find out what the truth really was?" I asked next.

"I guessed at it," she replied, "from something he said in referring to his brother. You know that I took a fanciful dislike to Nugent Dubourg before he came to Dimchurch?"

"Yes."

"And you remember that my prejudice against him was confirmed, on the first day when I passed my hand over his face to compare it with his brother's."

"I remember."

"Well--while Oscar was rambling and contradicting himself--he said something (a mere trifle) which suggested to me that the person with the blue face must be his brother. There was the explanation that I had sought for in vain--the explanation of my persistent dislike to Nugent!