person, from the
opposite end of the room--he asked the all-important question which no
human being had ever put to her yet.

"Are you sure, Lucilla, that you are blind for life?"

A dead silence followed the utterance of those words.

I brushed away the tears from my eyes, and looked up.

Oscar had been--as I supposed--holding her in his arms, silently soothing
her, when his brother spoke. At the moment when I saw her, she had just
detached herself from him. She advanced a step, towards the part of the
room in which Nugent stood--and stopped, with her face turned towards
him. Every faculty in her seemed to be suspended by the silent passage
into her mind of the new idea that he had called up. Through childhood,
girlhood, womanhood--never once, waking or dreaming, had the prospect of
restoration to sight presented itself within her range of contemplation,
until now. Not a trace was left in her countenance of the indignation
which Nugent had roused in her, hardly more than a moment since. Not a
sign appeared indicating a return of the nervous suffering which the
sense of his presence had inflicted on her, earlier in the day. The one
emotion in possession of her was astonishment--astonishment that had
struck her dumb; astonishment that waited, helplessly and mechanically,
to hear more.

I observed Oscar, next. His eyes were fixed on Lucilla--absorbed in
watching her. He spoke to Nugent, without looking at him; animated, as it
seemed, by a vague fear for Lucilla, which was slowly developing into a
vague fear for himself.

"Mind what you are doing!" he said. "Look at her, Nugent--look at her."

Nugent approached his brother, circuitously, so as to place Oscar between
Lucilla and himself.

"Have I offended you?" he asked.

Oscar looked at him in surprise. "Offended with you," he answered, "after
what you have forgiven, and what you have suffered, for my sake?"

"Still," persisted the other, "there is something wrong."

"I am startled, Nugent."

"Startled--by what?"

"By the question you have just put to Lucilla."

"You will understand me, and she will understand me, directly."

While those words were passing between the brothers, my attention
remained fixed on Lucilla. Her head had turned slowly towards the new
position which Nugent occupied when he spoke to Oscar. With this
exception, no other movement had escaped her. No sense of what the two
men were saying to each other seemed to have entered her mind.