een
such nursing before--never do I expect to see such nursing again. From
morning to night, she interested him, and kept him in good spirits. The
charming creature actually made her blindness a means of lightening the
weary hours of the man she loved.

Sometimes, she would sit before Oscar's looking-glass, and imitate all
the innumerable tricks, artifices, and vanities of a coquette arraying
herself for conquest--with such wonderful truth and humour of mimicry,
that you would have sworn she possessed the use of her eyes. Sometimes,
she would show him her extraordinary power of calculating by the sound of
a person's voice, the exact position which that person occupied towards
her in a room. Selecting me as the victim, she would first provide
herself with one of the nosegays always placed by her own hands at
Oscar's bedside; and would then tell me to take up my position
noiselessly in any part of the room that I pleased, and to say "Lucilla."
The instant the words were out of my mouth, the nosegay flew from her
hand, and hit me on the face. She never once missed her aim, on any one
of the occasions when this experiment was tried--and she never once
flagged in her childish enjoyment of the exhibition of her own skill.

Nobody was allowed to pour out Oscar's medicine but herself. She knew
when the spoon into which it was to be measured was full, by the sound
which the liquid made in falling into it. When he was able to sit up in
his bed, and when she was standing at the pillow-side, she could tell him
how near his head was to hers, by the change which he produced, when he
bent forward or when he drew back, in the action of the air on her face.
In the same way, she knew as well as he knew, when the sun was out and
when it was behind a cloud--judging by the differing effect of the air,
at such times, on her forehead and on her cheeks.

All the litter of little objects accumulating in a sick-room, she kept in
perfect order on a system of her own. She delighted in putting the room
tidy late in the evening, when we helpless people who could see were
beginning to think of lighting the candles. The time when we could just
discern her, flitting to and fro in the dusk, in her bright summer
dress--now visible as she passed the window, now lost in the shadows at
the end of the room--was the time when she began to clear the tables of
the things that had been wanted in the day, and to replace them by the
things which would be wanted