never again exchange
a friendly word. I had lost the companion with whom I had once been so
happy; and I had pained and disappointed Oscar. My life has never looked
so wretched and so worthless to me as it looked to-day on the pier at
Ramsgate.

He left me at the door, with a gentle encouraging pressure of my hand.

"I will call again later," he said; "and hear what Grosse's report of you
is, before he goes back to London. Rest, Lucilla--rest and compose
yourself."

A heavy footstep sounded suddenly behind us as he spoke. We both turned
round. Time had slipped by more rapidly than we had thought. There stood
Herr Grosse, just arrived on foot from the railway station.

His first look at me seemed to startle and disappoint him. His eyes
stared into mine through his spectacles with an expression of surprise
and anxiety which I had never seen in them before. Then he turned his
head and looked at Oscar with a sudden change--a change, unpleasantly
suggestive (to my fancy) of anger or distrust. Not a word fell from his
lips. Oscar was left to break the awkward silence. He spoke to Grosse.

"I won't disturb you and your patient now," he said. "I will come back in
an hour's time."

"No! you will come in along with me, if you please. I have something, my
young gentlemans, that I may want to say to you." He spoke with a frown
on his bushy eyebrows, and pointed in a very peremptory manner to the
house-door.

Oscar rang the bell. At the same moment my aunt, hearing us outside,
appeared on the balcony above the door.

"Good morning, Mr. Grosse," she said. "I hope you find Lucilla looking
her best. Only yesterday, I expressed my opinion that she was quite well
again."

Grosse took off his hat sulkily to my aunt, and looked back again at
me--looked so hard and so long, that he began to confuse me.

"Your aunt's opinions is not my opinions," he growled, close at my ear.
"I don't like the looks of you, Miss. Go in!"

The servant was waiting for us at the open door. I went an without making
any answer. Grosse waited to see Oscar enter the house before him.
Oscar's face darkened as he joined me in the hall. He looked half angry,
half confused. Grosse pushed himself roughly between us, and gave me his
arm. I went up-stairs with him, wondering what it all meant.

CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIFTH

Lucilla's Journal, concluded

_September_ 4th _(continued)._

ARRIVED in the drawing-room, Grosse placed me in a chair near the wind