[Note.--It is for me to answer that question. Give the miserable wretch his due. His conduct meant, in one plain word--remorse. The only excuse left that he could make to his own conscience for the infamous part which he was playing, was this--that his brother's personal disfigurement presented a fatal obstacle in the way of his brother's marriage. And now Lucilla's own words, Lucilla's own actions, had told him that Oscar's face was no obstacle to her seeing Oscar perpetually in the familiar intercourse of domestic life. The torture of self-reproach which this discovery inflicted on him, drove him out of her presence. His own lips would have betrayed him, if he had spoken a word more to her at that moment. This is no speculation of mine. I know what I am now writing to be the truth.--P.]
It is night again. I am in my bed-room--too nervous and too anxious to go to rest yet. Let me employ myself in finishing this private record of the events of the day.
Oscar came a little before dinner-time; haggard and pale, and so absent in mind that he hardly seemed to know what he was talking about. No explanations passed between us. He asked my pardon for the hard things he had said, and the ill-temper he had shown, earlier in the day. I readily accepted his excuses--and did my best to conceal the uneasiness which his vacant, pre-occupied manner caused me. All the time he was speaking to me, he was plainly thinking of something else--he was more unlike the Oscar of my blind remembrances than ever. It was the old voice talking in a new way: I can only describe it to myself in those terms.
As for his manner, I know it used to be always more or less quiet and retiring in the old days: but was it ever so hopelessly subdued and depressed, as I have seen it to-day? Useless to ask! In the by-gone time, I was not able to see it. My past judgment of him and my present judgment of him have been arrived at by such totally different means, that it seems useless to compare them. Oh, how I miss Madame Pratolungo! What a relief, what a consolation it would have been, to have said all this to her, and to have heard what she thought of it in return!
There is, however, a chance of my finding my way out of some of my perplexities, at any rate--if I can only wait till tomorrow.
Oscar seems to have made up his mind at last to enter into the explanations which he has hitherto withheld from me. He has asked me to give him a private interview in the morning. The circumstances which led to his making this request have highly excited my curiosity. Something is evidently going on under the surface, in which my interests are concerned--and, possibly, Oscar's interests too.
It all came about in this way.
On returning to the house, after Oscar had left me, I found that a letter from Grosse had arrived by the afternoon post. My dear old surgeon wrote to say that he was coming to see me--and added in a postscript that he would arrive the next day at luncheon-time. Past experience told me that this meant a demand on my aunt's housekeeping for all the good things that it could produce. (Ah, dear! I thought of Madame Pratolungo and the Mayonnaise. Will those times never come again?) Well--at dinner, I announced Grosse's visit; adding significantly, "at luncheon-time."
My aunt looked up from her plate with a little start--not interested, as I was prepared to hear, in the serious question of luncheon, but in the opinion which my medical adviser was likely to give of the state of my health.
"I am anxious to hear what Mr. Grosse says about you to-morrow," the old lady began. "I shall insist on his giving me a far more complete report of you than he gave last time. The recovery of your sight appears to me, my dear, to be quite complete."
"Do you want me to be cured, aunt, because you want to get away?" I asked. "Are you weary of Ramsgate?"
Miss Batchford's quick temper flashed at me out of Miss Batchford's bright old eyes.
"I am weary of keeping a letter of yours," she answered, with a look of disgust.
"A letter of mine!" I exclaimed.
"Yes. A letter which is only to be given to you, when Mr. Grosse pronounces that you are quite yourself again."
Oscar--who had not taken the slightest interest in the conversation thus far--suddenly stopped, with his fork half way to his mouth; changed color; and looked eagerly at my aunt.
"What letter?" I asked. "Who gave it to you? Why am I not to see it until I am quite myself again?"
Miss Batchford obstinately shook her head three times, in answer to those three questions.
"I hate secrets and mysteries," she said impatiently. "This is a secret and a mystery--and I long to have done with it. That is all. I have said too much already. I shall say no more."
All my entreaties were of no avail. My aunt's quick temper had evidently led her into committing an imprudence of some sort. Having done that, she was now provokingly determined not to make bad worse. Nothing that I could say would induce her to open her lips on the subject of the mysterious letter. "Wait till Mr. Grosse comes to-morrow." That was the only reply I could get.
As for Oscar, this little incident appeared to have an effect on him which added immensely to the curiosity that my aunt had roused in me.
He listened with breathless attention while I was trying to induce Miss Batchford to answer my questions. When I gave it up, he pushed away his plate, and ate no more. On the other hand (though generally the most temperate of men) he drank a great deal of wine, both at dinner and after. In the evening, he made so many mistakes in playing cards with my aunt, that she dismissed him from the game in disgrace. He sat in a corner for the rest of the time, pretending to listen while I was playing the piano--really lost to me and my music; buried, fathoms deep, in some uneasy thoughts of his own.
When he took his leave, he whispered these words in my ear; anxiously pressing my hand while he spoke:
"I must see you alone to-morrow, before Grosse comes. Can you manage it?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"At the stairs on the cliff, at eleven o'clock."
On that, he left me. But one question has pursued me ever since. Does Oscar know the writer of the mysterious letter? I firmly believe he does.
To-morrow will prove whether I am right or wrong. How I long for to-morrow to come!