st place, that he
and Nugent do not meet, unless I am present at the interview. But I am
not equally sure of what I ought to do in the case of Lucilla. Must I
keep them apart until I have first prepared her to see Oscar?"

"Let her see the devil himself if you like," growled Grosse, "so long as
you bring her here afterwards-directly to me. You will do the bettermost
thing, if you prepare Oscar. _She_ wants no preparations! She is enough
disappointed in him as it is!"

"Disappointed in him!" I repeated. "I don't understand you."

He settled himself wearily in his chair, and referred, in a softened and
saddened tone, to that private conversation of his with Lucilla, at
Ramsgate, which has already been reported in the Journal. I was now
informed, for the first time, of those changes in her sensations and in
her ways of thinking which had so keenly vexed and mortified her. I heard
of the ominous absence of the old thrill of pleasure, when Nugent took
her hand on meeting her at the seaside--I heard how bitterly his personal
appearance had disappointed her (when she had seen his features in
detail) by comparison with the charming ideal picture which she had
formed of her lover in the days of her blindness: those happier days, as
she had called them, when she was Poor Miss Finch.

"Surely," I said, "all the old feelings will come back to her when she
sees Oscar?"

"They will never come back to her--no, not if she sees fifty Oscars!"

He was beginning to frighten me, or to irritate me--I can hardly say
which. I only know that I persisted in disputing with him. "When she sees
the true man," I went on, "do you mean to say she will feel the same
disappointment----?"

I could get no farther than that. He cut me short there, without
ceremony.

"You foolish womans!" he interposed, "she will feel more than the same. I
have told you already it was one enormous disappointments to her when she
saw the handsome brodder with the fair complexions. Ask your own self
what it will be when she sees the ugly brodder with the blue face. I tell
you this!--she will think your true man the worst impostor of the two."

There I indignantly contradicted him.

"His face _may_ be a disappointment to her," I said--"I own that. But
there it will end. Her hand will tell her, when he takes it, that there
is no impostor deceiving her this time."

"Her hand will tell her nothing--no more than yours. I had not so much
hard hearts in me as to say th