the right one! For the second time, though I felt the longing
in me to look at him, I shrank from doing it.

Herr Grosse put his watch back in his pocket.

"The minutes is passed," he said. "Will you come into the odder rooms?
Will you understand that I cannot properly examine you before all these
peoples? Say, my lofely Feench--Yes? or No?"

"No!" she cried obstinately, with a childish stamp of her foot. "I insist
on showing everybody that I can pick out Oscar, the moment I open my
eyes."

Herr Grosse buttoned his coat, settled his owlish spectacles firmly on
his nose, and took up his hat. "Goot morning," he said. "I have nothing
more to do with you or your eyes. Cure yourself, you
little-spitfire-Feench. I am going back to London."

He opened the door. Even Lucilla was obliged to yield, when the surgeon
in attendance on her threatened to throw up the case.

"You brute!" she said indignantly--and took his arm again.

Grosse indulged himself in his diabolical grin. "Wait till you are able
to use your eyes, my lofe. Then you will see what a brutes I am!" With
those words he took her out.

We were left in the sitting-room, to wait until the surgeon had decided
whether he would, or would not, let Lucilla try her sight on that day.

While the others were, in their various ways, all suffering the same
uneasy sense of expectation, I was as quiet in my mind as the baby now
sleeping in his mother's arms. Thanks to Grosse's resolution to act on
the hint that I had given to him, I had now made it impossible--even if
the bandage was removed on that day--for Nugent to catch Lucilla's first
look when she opened her eyes. Her betrothed husband might certainly, on
such a special occasion as this, be admitted into her bed-chamber, in
company with her father or with me. But the commonest sense of propriety
would dictate the closing of the door on Nugent. In the sitting-room he
must wait (if he still persisted in remaining at the rectory) until she
was allowed to join him there. I privately resolved, having the control
of the matter in my own hands, that this should not happen until Lucilla
knew which of the twins was Nugent, and which was Oscar. A delicious
inward glow of triumph diffused itself all through me. I resisted the
strong temptation that I felt to discover how Nugent bore his defeat. If
I had yielded to it, he would have seen in my face that I gloried in
having outwitted him. I sat down, the picture of innocence, in