at a shock it would be to me, if I saw
him as you see him! Try to understand me, and you won't talk of my
loss--you will talk of my gain."

"Your gain?" I repeated. "What have you gained?"

"Happiness," she answered. "My life lives in my love. And my love lives
in my blindness."

There was the story of her whole existence--told in two words!

If you had seen her radiant face as she raised it again in the excitement
of speaking; if you had remembered (as I remembered) what her surgeon had
said of the penalty which she must inevitably pay for the recovery of her
sight--how would you have answered her? It is barely possible, perhaps,
that you might have done what I did. That is to say: You might have
modestly admitted that she knew what the conditions of her happiness were
better than you--and you might not have answered her at all!

I left them to talk together, and took a turn in the room, considering
with myself what we were to do next.

It was not easy to say. The barren information which I had received from
my darling was all the information that I possessed. Nugent had
unflinchingly carried his cruel deception to its end. He had falsely
given notice of his marriage at the church, in his brother's name; and he
was now in London, falsely obtaining his Marriage License, in his
brother's name also. So much I knew of his proceedings--and no more.

While I was still pondering, Lucilla cut the Gordian knot.

"Why are we stopping here?" she asked. "Let us go--and never return to
this hateful place again!"

As she rose to her feet, we were startled by a soft knock at the door.

I answered the knock. The woman who had brought Lucilla to the hotel
appeared once more. She seemed to be afraid to venture far from the door.
Standing just inside the room, she looked nervously at Lucilla, and said,
"Can I speak to you, Miss?"

"You can say anything you like, before this lady and gentleman," Lucilla
answered. "What is it?"

"I'm afraid we have been followed, Miss."

"Followed? By whom?"

"By the lady's maid. I saw her, a little while since, looking up at the
hotel--and then she went back in a hurry on the way to the house--and
that's not the worse of it, Miss."

"What else has happened?"

"We have made a mistake about the railway," said the woman. "There's a
train from London that we didn't notice in the timetable. They tell me
down-stairs it came in more than a quarter of an hour ago. Please to come
back, Miss--or