Oscar was rambling and contradicting himself--he said
something (a mere trifle) which suggested to me that the person with the
blue face must be his brother. There was the explanation that I had
sought for in vain--the explanation of my persistent dislike to Nugent!
That horrid dark face of his must have produced some influence on me when
I first touched it, like the influence which your horrid purple dress
produced on me, when I first touched _that._ Don't you see?"

I saw but too plainly. Oscar had been indebted for his escape from
discovery entirely to Lucilla's misinterpretation of his language. And
Lucilla's misinterpretation now stood revealed as the natural product of
her anxiety to account for her prejudice against Nugent Dubourg. Although
the mischief had been done--still, for the quieting of my own conscience,
I made an attempt to shake her faith in the false conclusion at which she
had arrived.

"There is one thing I don't see yet," I said. "I don't understand Oscar's
embarrassment in speaking to you. As you interpret him, what had he to be
afraid of?"

She smiled satirically.

"What has become of your memory, my dear?" she asked. "What were you
afraid of? You certainly never said a word to me of this poor man's
deformity. You felt yourself, I suppose, (just as Oscar felt himself),
placed between a choice of difficulties. On one side, my dislike of dark
colors and dark people warned Oscar to hold his tongue. On the other, my
hatred of having advantage taken of my blindness to keep things secret
from me, pressed him to speak out. Isn't that enough--with his shy
disposition, poor fellow--to account for his being embarrassed? Besides,"
she added, speaking more seriously, "perhaps he saw in my manner towards
him that he had disappointed and pained me."

"How?" I asked.

"Don't you remember his once acknowledging in the garden that he had
painted his face in the character of Bluebeard, to amuse the children? It
was not delicate, it was not affectionate--it was not like him--to show
such insensibility as that to his brother's shocking disfigurement. He
ought to have remembered it, he ought to have respected it. There! we
will say no more. We will go indoors and open the piano and try to
forget."

Even Oscar's clumsy excuse in the garden--instead of confirming her
suspicion--had lent itself to strengthen the foregone conclusion rooted
in her mind! At that critical moment--before I had consulted with the
tw