t
larger than it is. When I see the boat in comparison with a ship, and
then look back at the boat, I instantly go to the other extreme, and
fancy it smaller than it is. The setting this right still vexes me almost
as keenly as my stupidity vexed me some time since, when I saw my first
horse and cart from an upper window, and took it for a dog drawing a
wheelbarrow! Let me add in my own defence that both horse and cart were
figured at least five times their proper size in my blind fancy, which
makes my mistake, I think, not so very stupid after all.

Well, I amused my aunt. And what effect did I produce on Oscar?

If I could trust my eyes, I should say I produced exactly the contrary
effect on _him_--I made him melancholy. But I don't trust my eyes. They
must be deceiving me when they tell me that he looked, in my company, a
moping, anxious, miserable man.

Or is it, that he sees and feels something changed in Me? I could scream
with vexation and rage against myself. Here is my Oscar--and yet he is
not the Oscar I knew when I was blind. Contradictory as it seems, I used
to understand how he looked at me, when I was unable to see it. Now that
I can see it, I ask myself, Is this really love that is looking at me in
his eyes? or is it something else? How should I know? I knew when I had
only my own fancy to tell me. But now, try as I may, I cannot make the
old fancy and the new sight serve me in harmony both together. I am
afraid he sees that I don't understand him. Oh, dear! dear! why did I not
meet my good old Grosse, and become the new creature that he has made me,
before I met Oscar? I should have had no blind memories and
prepossessions to get over then. I shall become used to my new self, I
hope and believe, with time--and that will accustom me to my new
impressions of Oscar--and so it may all come right in the end. It is all
wrong enough now. He put his arm round me, and gave me a little tender
squeeze, while we were following Miss Batchford down to the dining-room
this afternoon. Nothing in me answered to it. I should have felt it all
over me a few months since.

Here is a tear on the paper. What a fool I am! Why can't I write about
something else?

I sent my second letter to my father to-day; telling him of Oscar's
return from abroad, and taking no notice of his not having replied to my
first letter. The only way to manage my father is not to take notice, and
to let him come right by himself. I showed Oscar m