time for being away from her, than
the humiliating time when she was learning to distinguish between round
and square. It was she (not I) who welcomed the little journey to
Ramsgate as a pleasant change in her dull life, which would help to
reconcile her to Oscar's absence. In brief, if she had actually received
a letter from Oscar, relieving her of all anxiety about him, her words
and looks could hardly have offered a completer contrast than they now
showed to her words and looks of the previous day.

If I had noticed no other alteration in her than this welcome change for
the better, my record of the day would have ended here, as the record of
unmixed happiness.

But, I grieve to say, I have something unpleasant to add. While she was
making her excuses to me, and speaking in the sensible and satisfactory
terms which I have just repeated, I noticed a curious underlying
embarrassment in her manner, entirely unlike any previous embarrassment
which had ever intruded itself between us. And, stranger still, on the
first occasion when Zillah came into the room, while I was in it, I
observed that Lucilla's embarrassment was reflected (when the old woman
spoke to me) in the face and manner of Lucilla's nurse.

But one conclusion could possibly follow from what I saw:--they were both
concealing something from me; and they were both more or less ashamed of
what they were doing.

Somewhere--not very far back in these pages--I have said of myself that I
am not by nature a woman who is easily ready to suspect others. On this
very account, when I find suspicion absolutely forced on me--as it was
now--I am apt to fly into the opposite extreme. In the present case, I
fixed on the person to suspect--all the more readily from having been
slow to suspect him in bygone days. "In some way or other," I said to
myself, "Nugent Dubourg is at the bottom of this."

Was he communicating with her privately, in the name and in the character
of Oscar?

The bare idea of it hurried me headlong into letting her know that I had
noticed the change in her.

"Lucilla!" I said. "Has anything happened?"

"What do you mean?" she asked coldly.

"I fancy I see some change----" I began.

"I don't understand you," she answered, walking away from me as she
spoke.

I said no more. If our intimacy had been less close and less
affectionate, I might have openly avowed to her what was passing in my
mind. But how could I say to Lucilla, You are deceivin