ed
the handkerchief with it, and popped it suddenly on Lucilla's nose. "Hold
him there, Miss. You cannot for the life of you smell Grosse now. Goot!
We may go on again."

He took a magnifying glass out of his waistcoat pocket, and waited till
Lucilla had fairly exhausted herself with laughing. Then the
examination--so cruelly grotesque in itself, so terribly serious in the
issues which it involved--resumed its course: Herr Grosse glaring at his
patient through his magnifying glass; Lucilla leaning back in the chair,
holding the handkerchief over her nose.

A minute, or more, passed--and the ordeal of the examination came to an
end.

Herr Grosse put back his magnifying glass with a grunt which sounded like
a grunt of relief, and snatched the handkerchief away from Lucilla.

"Ach! what a nasty smell!" he said, holding the handkerchief to his nose
with a grimace of disgust. "Tobaccos is much better than this." He
solaced his nostrils, offended by the lavender-water, with a huge pinch
of snuff. "Now I am going to talk," he went on. "See! I keep my distance.
You don't want your handkerchiefs--you smell me no more."

"Am I blind for life?" said Lucilla. "Pray, pray tell me, sir! Am I blind
for life?"

"Will you kees me if I tell you?"

"Oh, do consider how anxious I am! Pray, pray, pray tell me!"

She tried to go down on her knees before him. He held her back firmly and
kindly in her chair.

"Now! now! now! you be nice-goot, and tell me this first. When you are
out in the garden, taking your little lazy lady's walks on a shiny-sunny
day, is it all the same to your eyes as if you were lying in your bed in
the middles of the night?"

"No."

"Hah! You know it is nice-light at one time? you know it is horrid-dark
at the odder?"

"Yes."

"Then why you ask me if you are blind for life? If you can see as much as
that, you are not properly blind at all?"

She clasped her hands, with a low cry of delight. "Oh, where is Oscar?"
she said softly. "Where is Oscar?" I looked round for him. He was gone.
While his brother and I had been hanging spell-bound over the surgeon's
questions and the patient's answers, he must have stolen silently out of
the room.

Herr Grosse rose, and vacated the chair in favor of Mr. Sebright. In the
ecstasy of the new hope now confirmed in her, Lucilla seemed to be
unconscious of the presence of the English oculist, when he took his
colleague's place. His grave face looked more serious than