n spite
of myself, I repented what I had said to him.

In a moment more, I was out on the stairs to try if I could overtake him.

I was too late. I heard the garden-gate bang, before I was out of the
house. Twice I approached the gate to follow him. And twice I drew back,
in the fear of making bad worse. It ended in my returning to the
sitting-room, very seriously dissatisfied with myself.

The first welcome interruption to my solitude came--not from Lucilla--but
from the old nurse. Zillah appeared with a letter for me: left that
moment at the rectory by the servant from Browndown. The direction was in
Oscar's handwriting. I opened the envelope, and read these words:--

"MADAME PRATOLUNGO,--YOU have distressed and pained me more than I can
say. There are faults, and serious ones, on my side, I know. I heartily
beg your pardon for anything that I may have said or done to offend you.
I cannot submit to your hard verdict on me. If you knew how I adore
Lucilla, you would make allowances for me--you would understand me better
than you do. I cannot get your last cruel words out of my ears. I cannot
meet you again without some explanation of them. You stabbed me to the
heart, when you said to me this evening that it would be a happier
prospect for Lucilla if she had been going to marry my brother instead of
marrying me. I hope you did not really mean that? Will you please write
and tell me whether you did or not?

"OSCAR."

Write and tell him? It was absurd enough--when we were within a few
minutes' walk of each other--that Oscar should prefer the cold formality
of a letter, to the friendly ease of a personal interview. Why could he
not have called, and spoken to me? We should have made it up together far
more comfortably in that way--and in half the time. At any rate, I
determined to go to Browndown, and be good friends again, viva-voce,
with this poor, weak, well-meaning, ill-judging boy. Was it not monstrous
to have attached serious meaning to what Oscar had said when he was in a
panic of nervous terror! His tone of writing so keenly distressed me that
I resented his letter on that very account. It was one of the chilly
evenings of an English June. A small fire was burning in the grate. I
crumpled up the letter, and threw it, as I supposed, into the fire.
(After-events showed that I only threw it into a corner of the fender
instead.) Then, I put on my hat, without stopping to think of Lucilla, or
of what she was writi