g me? It would have
been the end of our sisterhood--the end of our friendship. When
confidence is withdrawn between two people who love each
other--everything is withdrawn. They are on the footing of strangers from
that moment, and must stand on ceremony. Delicate minds will understand
why I accepted the check she had administered to me, and said no more.

I went into the village alone. Managing matters so as to excite no
surprise, I contrived to have a little gossip about Nugent with
Gootheridge at the inn, and with the servant at Browndown. If Nugent had
returned secretly to Dimchurch, one of those two men, in our little
village, must almost certainly have seen him. Neither of them had seen
him.

I inferred from this that he had not tried to communicate with her
personally. Had he attempted it (more cunningly and more safely) by
letter?

I went back to the rectory. It was close on the hour which I had
appointed with Lucilla--now that the responsibility rested on my
shoulders--for allowing her to use her eyes. On taking off the bandage, I
noticed a circumstance which confirmed the conclusion at which I had
already arrived. Her eyes deliberately avoided looking into mine.
Suppressing as well as I could the pain which this new discovery caused
me, I repeated Grosse's words, prohibiting her from attempting to look
into a book, or to use a pen, until he had seen her again.

"There is no need for him to forbid me to do that," she said.

"Have you attempted it already?" I inquired.

"I looked into a little book of engravings," she answered. "But I could
distinguish nothing. The lines all mingled together and swam before my
eyes."

"Have you tried to write?" I asked next. (I was ashamed of myself for
laying that trap for her--although the serious necessity of discovering
whether she was privately in correspondence with Nugent, might surely
have excused it?)

"No," she replied. "I have not tried to write."

She changed color when she made that answer. It is necessary to own that,
in putting my question, I was too much excited to call to mind, what I
should have remembered in a calmer state. There was no necessity for her
trying to use her eyes--even if she was really carrying on a
correspondence which she wished to keep secret from me. Zillah had been
in the habit of reading her letters to her, before I appeared at the
rectory; and she could write short notes (as I have already mentioned) by
feeling her way on the