remained) of being exposed by Grosse
as an impostor, when the surgeon visited his patient on the next
day--Nugent seized the opportunity of making his absence the means of
working on Lucilla's feelings, so as to persuade her to accompany him to
London. Don't ask me which of these two conclusions I favor. For reasons
which you will understand when you have come to the end of my narrative,
I would rather not express my opinion, either one way or the other.

Read the letter--and determine for yourselves:

"MY DARLING,--After a sleepless night, I have decided on leaving
Ramsgate, by the next train that starts after you receive these lines.
Last night's experience has satisfied me that my presence here (after
what I said to you on the pier) only distresses you. Some influence that
is too strong for you to resist has changed your heart towards me. When
the time comes for you to determine whether you will be my wife on the
conditions that I have proposed, I see but too plainly that you will say
No. Let me make it less hard for you, my love, to do that, by leaving you
to write the word--instead of saying it to me. If you wish for your
freedom, cost me what it may, I will absolve you from your engagement. I
love you too dearly to blame you. My address in London is on the other
leaf. Farewell!

"OSCAR."

The address given on the blank leaf is at an hotel.

A few lines more in the Journal follow the lines last quoted in this
place. Except a word or two, here and there, it is impossible any longer
to decipher the writing. The mischief done to her eyes by her reckless
use of them, by her fits of crying, by her disturbed nights, by the
long-continued strain on her of agitation and suspense, has evidently
justified the worst of those unacknowledged forebodings which Grosse felt
when he saw her. The last lines of the Journal are, as writing, actually
inferior to her worst penmanship when she was blind.

However, the course which she ended in taking on receipt of the letter
which you have just read, is sufficiently indicated by a note of Nugent's
writing, left at Miss Batchford's residence at Ramsgate by a porter from
the railway. After-events make it necessary to preserve this note also.
It runs thus:--

"MADAM,--I write, by Lucilla's wish, to beg that you will not be anxious
on discovering that your niece has left Ramsgate. She accompanies me, at
my express request, to the house of a married lady who is a relative of
mine, an