nty of time still
to leave Dimchurch."

He looked up as suddenly as he had looked down.

"Do you and Oscar think me a stock or a stone?" he burst out angrily.

"What do you mean?"

"Who are you indebted to for what is going to happen to-day?" he went on,
more and more passionately. "You are indebted to Me. Who among you all
stood alone in refusing to believe that she was blind for life? _I_ did!
Who brought the man here who has given her back her sight? _I_ brought
the man! And I am the one person who is to be left in ignorance of how it
ends. The others are to be present: I am to be sent away. The others are
to see it: I am to hear by post (if any of you think of writing to me)
what she does, what she says, how she looks, at the first heavenly moment
when she opens her eyes on the world." He flung up his hand in the air,
and burst out savagely with a bitter laugh. "I astonish you, don't I? I
am claiming a position which I have no right to occupy. What interest can
_I_ feel in it? Oh God! what do _I_ care about the woman to whom I have
given a new life?" His voice broke into a sob at those last wild words.
He tore at the breast of his coat as if he was suffocating--and turned,
and left me.

I stood rooted to the spot. In one breathless instant, the truth broke on
me like a revelation. At last I had penetrated the terrible secret.
Nugent loved her.

My first impulse, when I recovered myself, hurried me at the top of my
speed back to the rectory. For a moment or two, I think I must really
have lost my senses. I felt a frantic suspicion that he had gone into the
house, and that he was making his way to Lucilla at that moment. When I
found that all was quiet--when Zillah had satisfied me that no visitor
had come near our side of the rectory--I calmed down a little, and went
back to the garden to compose myself before I ventured into Lucilla's
presence.

After awhile, I got over the first horror of it, and saw my own position
plainly. There was not a living soul at Dimchurch in whom I could
confide. Come what might of it, in this dreadful emergency, I must trust
in myself alone.

I had just arrived at that startling conclusion; I had shed some bitter
tears when I remembered how hardly I had judged poor Oscar on more than
one occasion; I had decided that my favorite Nugent was the most hateful
villain living, and that I would leave nothing undone that the craft of a
woman could compass to drive him out of the place-