t 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 broth