第72章 CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH(3)

That horrid dark face of his must have produced some influence on me when I first touched it, like the influence which your horrid purple dress produced on me, when I first touched _that._ Don't you see?"

I saw but too plainly. Oscar had been indebted for his escape from discovery entirely to Lucilla's misinterpretation of his language. And Lucilla's misinterpretation now stood revealed as the natural product of her anxiety to account for her prejudice against Nugent Dubourg. Although the mischief had been done--still, for the quieting of my own conscience, I made an attempt to shake her faith in the false conclusion at which she had arrived.

"There is one thing I don't see yet," I said. "I don't understand Oscar's embarrassment in speaking to you. As you interpret him, what had he to be afraid of?"

She smiled satirically.

"What has become of your memory, my dear?" she asked. "What were you afraid of? You certainly never said a word to me of this poor man's deformity. You felt yourself, I suppose, (just as Oscar felt himself), placed between a choice of difficulties. On one side, my dislike of dark colors and dark people warned Oscar to hold his tongue. On the other, my hatred of having advantage taken of my blindness to keep things secret from me, pressed him to speak out. Isn't that enough--with his shy disposition, poor fellow--to account for his being embarrassed? Besides," she added, speaking more seriously, "perhaps he saw in my manner towards him that he had disappointed and pained me."

"How?" I asked.

"Don't you remember his once acknowledging in the garden that he had painted his face in the character of Bluebeard, to amuse the children? It was not delicate, it was not affectionate--it was not like him--to show such insensibility as that to his brother's shocking disfigurement. He ought to have remembered it, he ought to have respected it. There! we will say no more. We will go indoors and open the piano and try to forget."

Even Oscar's clumsy excuse in the garden--instead of confirming her suspicion--had lent itself to strengthen the foregone conclusion rooted in her mind! At that critical moment--before I had consulted with the twin-brothers as to what was to be done next--it was impossible to say more. I felt seriously alarmed when I thought of the future. When she was told--as told she must be--of the dreadful delusion into which she had fallen, what would be the result to Oscar? what would be the effect on herself? I own I shrank from pursuing the inquiry.

When we reached the turn in the valley, I looked back at Browndown for the last time. The twin-brothers were still in the place at which we had left them. Though the faces were indistinguishable, I could still see the figures plainly--Oscar sitting crouched up on the wall; Nugent erect at his side, with one hand laid on his shoulder. Even at that distance, the types of the two characters were expressed in the attitudes of the two men. As we entered the new winding of the valley which shut them out from view, I felt (so easy is it to comfort a woman!) that the commanding position of Nugent had produced its encouraging impression on my mind.

"He will find a way out of it," I said to myself, "Nugent will help us through!"