"No? then he is at Browndown of course with that poor wretched disfigured brother of his. I have got over my terror of Nugent's hideous face. I am even beginning (though I never liked him, as you know) to pity him, with such a dreadful complexion as that. Don't let us talk about it! Don't let us talk at all! I want to go on thinking of Oscar."
She resumed her knitting, and shut herself up luxuriously in her own happy thoughts. Knowing what I knew, it was nothing less than heart-breaking to see her and hear her. Afraid to trust myself to say another word, I softly closed the door, and charged Zillah (when her mistress rang her bell) to say for me that I was weary after the events of the day, and had gone to rest in my bed-room.
At last, I was alone. At last I was at the end of my maneuvers to spare myself the miserable necessity of opening Oscar's letter. After first locking my door, I broke the seal, and read the lines which follow.
"KIND AND DEAR FRIEND,--Forgive me: I am going to surprise and distress you. My letter thanks you gratefully; and bids you a last farewell.
"Summon all your indulgence for me. Read these lines to the end: they will tell you what happened after I left the rectory.
"Nothing had been seen of Nugent, when I reached this house. It was not till a quarter of an hour later that I heard his voice at the door, calling to me, and asking if I had come back. I answered, and he joined me in the sitting-room. Nugent's first words to me were these:-- "
'Oscar, I have come to ask your pardon, and to bid you good-bye.'
"I can give you no idea of the tone in which he spoke to me: it would have gone straight to your heart, as it went straight to mine. For the moment, I was not able to answer him. I could only offer him my hand. He sighed bitterly, and refused to take it.
" 'I have something still to tell you,' he said. 'Wait till you have heard it; and give me your hand afterwards--if you can.'
"He even refused to take the chair to which I pointed. He distressed me by standing in my presence as if he was my inferior. The next words that he said to me--"No! I have need of all my calmness and all my courage. It shakes both to recall what he said to me. I sat down to write this, intending to repeat to you everything that passed between us. Another of my weaknesses! another of my failures! The tears come into my eyes again, when my mind attempts to dwell on the details. I can only tell you the result. My brother's confession may be summed up in three words. Prepare yourself to be startled; prepare yourself to be grieved.
"Nugent loves her.
"Think of this discovery falling on me, after I had seen my innocent Lucilla's arms round his neck--after my own eyes had shown me how she rejoiced over her first sight of _him;_ how she shuddered at her first sight of _me!_ Need I tell you what I suffered? No.
"Nugent held out his hand, when he had done--as I had held out mine before he began.
" 'The one atonement I can make to you and to her,' he said, 'is never to let either of you set eyes on me again. Shake hands, Oscar; and let me go.'
"If I had willed it so--so it might have ended. I willed it differently.
It has ended differently. Can you guess how?"
I laid down the letter for a moment. It cut me with such keen regret; it fired me with such hot rage--that I was within a hairsbreadth of tearing the rest of it up unread, and trampling it under my feet. I took a turn in the room. I dipped my handkerchief in water, and bound it round my head. In a minute or two I was myself again--I could force my mind away from my poor Lucilla, and return to the letter. It proceeded thus:
"I can write calmly of what I have next to tell you. You shall hear what I have decided, and what I have done.
"I told Nugent to wait in the room, while I went away, and thought over what he had said to me, by myself. He attempted to resist this. I insisted on his yielding. For the first time in our lives, we changed places. It was I who took the lead, and he who followed. I left him and went out into the valley alone.
"The heavenly tranquillity, the comforting solitude helped me. I saw my position and his, in their true light. Before I got back, I had decided (cost me what it might) on myself making the sacrifice to which my brother had offered to submit. For Lucilla's sake, and for Nugent's sake, I felt the certain assurance in my own mind that it was _my_ duty, and not _his,_ to go.
"Don't blame me; don't grieve for me. Read the rest. I want you to think of this with my thoughts--to feel about it as I feel at this moment.
"Bearing in mind what Nugent has confessed, and what I have myself seen, have I any right to hold Lucilla to her engagement? I am firmly persuaded that I have no right. After inspiring her with terror and disgust at the moment when her eyes first looked at me; after seeing her innocently happy in Nugent's arms--how, in God's name, can I claim her as mine? Our marriage has become an impossibility. For her own sake, I cannot, I dare not, appeal to our engagement. The wreck of _my_ happiness is nothing.
The wreck of _her_ happiness would be a crime. I absolve her from her engagement. She is free.
"There is my duty towards Lucilla--as I see it.
"As to Nugent next. I owe it entirely to my brother (at the time of the Trial) that the honor of our family has been saved, and that I have escaped a shameful death on the scaffold. Is there any limit to the obligation that he has laid on me, after doing me such a service as this?
There is no limit. The man who loves Lucilla and the brother who has saved my life are one. I am bound to leave him free--I do leave him free--to win Lucilla by open and loyal means, if he can. As soon as Herr Grosse considers that she is fit to bear the disclosure, let her be told of the error into which she has fallen (through my fault)--let her read these lines, purposely written to meet her eye as well as yours--and let my brother tell her afterwards what has passed to-night in this house between himself and me. She loves him now, believing him to be Oscar.