rfere actively for the first time.

"Let me suggest, Lucilla," he said, "that it is your duty to look at the
other side of the question, before you make up your mind. In the first
place, it is surely hard on Oscar to postpone the wedding-day again. In
the second place, clever as he is, Herr Grosse is not infallible. It is
just possible that the operation may fail, and that you may find you have
put off your marriage for three months, to no purpose. Do think of it! If
you defer the operation on your eyes till after your marriage, you
conciliate all interests, and you only delay by a month or so the time
when you may see."

Lucilla impatiently shook her head.

"If you were blind," she answered, "you would not willingly delay by a
single hour the time when you might see. You ask me to think of it. I ask
_you_ to think of the years I have lost. I ask _you_ to think of the
exquisite happiness I shall feel, when Oscar and I are standing at the
altar, if I can _see_ the husband to whom I am giving myself for life!
Put it off for a month? You might as well ask me to die for a month. It
is like death to be sitting here blind, and to know that a man is within
a few hours' reach of me who can give me my sight! I tell you all
plainly, if you go on opposing me in this, I don't answer for myself. If
Herr Grosse is not recalled to Dimchurch before the end of the week--I am
my own mistress; I will go to him in London!"

Both the brothers looked at me.

"Have you nothing to say, Madame Pratolungo?" asked Nugent.

Oscar was too painfully agitated to speak. He softly crossed to my chair;
and, kneeling by me, put my hand entreatingly to his lips.

You may consider me a heartless woman if you will. I remained entirely
unmoved even by this. Lucilla's interests and my interests, you will
observe, were now one. I had resolved, from the first, that she should
not be married in ignorance of which was the man who was disfigured by
the blue face. If she took the course which would enable her to make that
discovery for herself, at the right time, she would spare me the
performance of a very painful and ungracious duty--and she would marry,
as I was determined she should marry, with a full knowledge of the truth.
In this position of affairs, it was no business of mine to join the
twin-brothers in trying to make her alter her resolution. On the
contrary, it was my business to confirm her in it.

"I can't see that I have any right to interfere