liar
intercourse of domestic life. The torture of self-reproach which this
discovery inflicted on him, drove him out of her presence. His own lips
would have betrayed him, if he had spoken a word more to her at that
moment. This is no speculation of mine. I know what I am now writing to
be the truth.--P.]

It is night again. I am in my bed-room--too nervous and too anxious to go
to rest yet. Let me employ myself in finishing this private record of the
events of the day.

Oscar came a little before dinner-time; haggard and pale, and so absent
in mind that he hardly seemed to know what he was talking about. No
explanations passed between us. He asked my pardon for the hard things he
had said, and the ill-temper he had shown, earlier in the day. I readily
accepted his excuses--and did my best to conceal the uneasiness which his
vacant, pre-occupied manner caused me. All the time he was speaking to
me, he was plainly thinking of something else--he was more unlike the
Oscar of my blind remembrances than ever. It was the old voice talking in
a new way: I can only describe it to myself in those terms.

As for his manner, I know it used to be always more or less quiet and
retiring in the old days: but was it ever so hopelessly subdued and
depressed, as I have seen it to-day? Useless to ask! In the by-gone time,
I was not able to see it. My past judgment of him and my present judgment
of him have been arrived at by such totally different means, that it
seems useless to compare them. Oh, how I miss Madame Pratolungo! What a
relief, what a consolation it would have been, to have said all this to
her, and to have heard what she thought of it in return!

There is, however, a chance of my finding my way out of some of my
perplexities, at any rate--if I can only wait till tomorrow.

Oscar seems to have made up his mind at last to enter into the
explanations which he has hitherto withheld from me. He has asked me to
give him a private interview in the morning. The circumstances which led
to his making this request have highly excited my curiosity. Something is
evidently going on under the surface, in which my interests are
concerned--and, possibly, Oscar's interests too.

It all came about in this way.

On returning to the house, after Oscar had left me, I found that a letter
from Grosse had arrived by the afternoon post. My dear old surgeon wrote
to say that he was coming to see me--and added in a postscript that he
would arri