the lower end of the room. Listening in breathless
interest, Oscar had noiselessly advanced half-way towards us. At a sign
from me, he checked himself and came no farther.

"Do you really mean, Lucilla, that you no longer love him?" I said.

"I can tell you nothing about it," she answered--"except that some
dreadful change has come over me. While I had my sight, I could partly
account for it--I believed that the new sense had made a new being of me.
But now I have lost my sight again--now I am once more what I have been
all my life--still the same horrible insensibility possesses me. I have
so little feeling for him, that I sometimes find it hard to persuade
myself that he really _is_ Oscar. You know how I used to adore him. You
know how enchanted I should once have been to marry him. Think of what I
must suffer, feeling towards him as I feel now!"

I looked up again. Oscar had stolen nearer; I could see his face plainly.
The good influence of Lucilla was beginning to do its good work! I saw
the tears rising in his eyes; I saw love and pity taking the place of
hatred and revenge. The Oscar of my old recollections was standing before
me once more!

"I don't want to go away," Lucilla went on; "I don't want to leave him.
All I ask for, is a little more time. Time _must_ help me to get back
again to my old self. My blind days have been the days of my whole life.
Can a few weeks of sight have deprived me of the feelings which have been
growing in me for years? I won't believe it! I can find my way about the
house; I can tell things by my touch; I can do all that I did in my
blindness, just as well as ever, now I am blind again. The feeling for
_him_ will come back to me like the rest. Only give me time! only give me
time!"

At the last word, she started to her feet in sudden alarm. "There is some
one in the room," she said. "Some one who is crying! Who is it?"

Oscar was close to us. The tears were falling fast over his cheeks--the
one faint sobbing breath which had escaped him had caught my ear as well
as Lucilla's. I took his hand in one of my hands; and I took Lucilla's
hand in the other. For good or for evil, the result rested with God's
mercy. The time had come.

"Who is it?" Lucilla repeated impatiently.

"Try if you can tell, my love, without asking me."

With those words, I put her hand in Oscar's hand--and stood close,
watching her face.

For one awful moment, when she first felt the familiar touch, the b