and I said so to Oscar. He persisted just
as obstinately on his side.

"Suppose we go on to the end of the week," he said; "and still no letter
from your father comes, for you, or for me? Will you admit, _then,_ that
his silence is suspicious?"

"I will admit that his silence shows a sad want of proper consideration
for _you,_" I replied.

"And there you will stop? You won't see (what I see) the influence of
Madame Pratolungo making itself felt at the rectory, and poisoning your
father's mind against our marriage?"

He was pressing me rather hardly. I did my best, however, to tell him
honestly what was passing in my mind.

"I can see," I said, "that Madame Pratolungo has behaved most cruelly to
you. And I believe, after what you have told me, that she would rejoice
if I broke my engagement, and married your brother. But I can _not_
understand that she is mad enough to be actually plotting to make me do
it. Nobody knows better than she does how faithfully I love you, and how
hopeless it would be to attempt to make me marry another man. Would the
stupidest woman living, who looked at you two brothers (knowing what she
knows), be stupid enough to do what you suspect Madame Pratolungo of
doing?"

I thought this unanswerable. He had his reply to it ready, for all that.

"If you had seen more of the world, Lucilla," he said, "you would know
that a true love like yours is a mystery to a woman like Madame
Pratolungo. She doesn't believe in it--she doesn't understand it. She
knows herself to be capable of breaking any engagement, if the
circumstances encouraged her--and she estimates your fidelity by her
knowledge of her own nature. There is nothing in her experience of you,
or in her knowledge of my brother's disfigurement, to discourage such a
woman from scheming to part us. She has seen for herself--what you have
already told me--that you have got over your first aversion to him. She
knows that women as charming as you are, have over and over again married
men far more personally repulsive than my brother. Lucilla! something
which is not to be out-argued, and not to be contradicted, tells me that
her return to England will be fatal to my hopes, if that return finds you
and me with no closer tie between us than the tie that binds us now. Are
these fanciful apprehensions, unworthy of a man? My darling! worthy or
not worthy, you ought to make allowances for them. They are apprehensions
inspired by my love for You!"

U