painful--if it is true that she was blind at a year old. How do you
account for it? Can there be such a thing as a purely instinctive
antipathy; remaining passive until external influences rouse it; and
resting on no sort of practical experience whatever?"

"I think there may be," I replied. "Why, when I was a child just able to
walk, did I shrink away from the first dog I saw who barked at me? I
could not have known, at that age, either by experience or teaching, that
a dog's bark is sometimes the prelude to a dog's bite. My terror, on that
occasion, was purely instinctive surely?"

"Ingeniously put," he said. "But I am not satisfied yet."

"You must also remember," I continued, "that she has a positively painful
association with dark colors, on certain occasions. They sometimes
produce a disagreeable impression on her nerves, through her sense of
touch. She discovered, in that way, that I had a dark gown on, on the day
when I first saw her."

"And yet, she touches my brother's face, and fails to discover any
alteration in it."

I met that objection also--to my own satisfaction, though not to his.

"I am far from sure that she might not have made the discovery," I said,
"if she had touched him for the first time, since the discoloration of
his face. But she examines him now with a settled impression in her mind,
derived from previous experience of what she has felt in touching his
skin. Allow for the modifying influence of that impression on her sense
of touch--and remember at the same time, that it is the color and not the
texture of the skin that is changed--and his escape from discovery
becomes, to my mind, intelligible."

He shook his head; he owned he could not dispute my view. But he was not
content for all that.

"Have you made any inquiries," he asked, "about the period of her infancy
before she was blind? She may be still feeling, indirectly and
unconsciously, the effect of some shock to her nervous system in the time
when she could see."

"I have never thought of making inquiries."

"Is there anybody within our reach, who was familiarly associated with
her in the first year of her life? It is hardly likely, I am afraid, at
this distance of time?"

"There is a person now in the house," I said. "Her old nurse is still
living."

"Send for her directly."

Zillah appeared. After first explaining what he wanted with her, Nugent
went straight to the inquiry which he had in view.

"Was your young