s of mankind--I saw my way to
putting a moral extinguisher on the author of my being. The Eternal City
contains three hundred and sixty-five churches, and (say) three million
and sixty-five pictures. I insisted on his seeing them all--at the
advanced age of seventy-five years! The sedative result followed, exactly
as I had anticipated. I stupefied good Papa with churches and
pictures--and then I tried him with a marble woman to begin with. He fell
asleep before the Venus of the Capitol. When I saw that, I said to
myself, Now he will do; Don Juan is reformed at last.

Lucilla's correspondence with me--at first cheerful--gradually assumed a
desponding tone.

Six weeks had passed since her departure from Dimchurch; and still
Oscar's letters held out no hope of his being able to join her in London.
His recovery was advancing, but not so rapidly as his medical adviser had
anticipated. It was possible--to look the worst in the face boldly--that
he might not get the doctor's permission to leave Browndown before the
time arrived for Lucilla's return to the rectory. In this event, he could
only entreat her to be patient, and to remember that though he was
gaining ground but slowly, he was still getting on. Under these
circumstances, Lucilla was naturally vexed and dejected. She had never
(she wrote), from her girlhood upward, spent such a miserable time with
her aunt as she was spending now.

On reading this letter, I instantly smelt something wrong.

I corresponded with Oscar almost as frequently as with Lucilla. His last
letter to me flatly contradicted his last letter to his promised wife. In
writing to my address, he declared himself to be rapidly advancing
towards recovery. Under the new treatment, the fits succeeded each other
at longer and longer intervals, and endured a shorter and shorter time.
Here then was plainly a depressing report sent to Lucilla, and an
encouraging report sent to me.

What did it mean?

Oscar's next letter to me answered the question.

"I told you in my last" (he wrote), "that the discoloration of my skin
had begun. The complexion which you were once so good as to admire, has
disappeared for ever. I am now of a livid ashen color--so like death,
that I sometimes startle myself when I look in the glass. In about six
weeks more, as the doctor calculates, this will deepen to a blackish
blue; and then, 'the saturation' (as he calls it) will be complete.

"So far from feeling any useless regret