Chapter 24 - Page 2

had by this time recovered its balance. I was able to ask myself what this young fellow's daring idea was really worth. Was it within the range of possibility that a sense so delicate as the sense of sight, lost for one-and-twenty years, could be restored by any means short of a miracle? It was monstrous to suppose it: the thing could not be. If there had been the faintest chance of giving my poor dear back the blessing of sight, that chance would have been tried by competent persons years and years since. I was ashamed of myself for having been violently excited at the moment by the new thought which Nugent had started in my mind; I was honestly indignant at his uselessly disturbing me with the vainest of all vain hopes. The one wise thing to do in the future, was to caution this flighty and inconsequent young man to keep his mad notion about Lucilla to himself--and to dismiss it from my own thoughts, at once and for ever.

Just as I arrived at that sensible resolution, I was recalled to what was going on in the room, by Lucilla's voice, addressing me by my name.

"The likeness is wonderful," she said. "Still, I think I can find a difference between them."

(The only difference between them was in the contrast of complexion and in the contrast of manner--both these being dissimilarities which appealed more or less directly to the eye.)

"What difference do you find?" I asked.

She slowly came towards me, with an anxious perplexed face; pondering as she advanced.

"I can't explain it," she answered--after a long silence.

When Lucilla left him, Nugent rose from his chair. He abruptly--almost roughly--took his brother's hand. He spoke to his brother in a strangely excited, feverish, headlong way.

"My dear fellow, now I have seen her, I congratulate you more heartily than ever. She is charming; she is unique. Oscar! I could almost envy you, if you were anyone else!"

Oscar was radiant with delight. His brother's opinion ranked above all human opinions in his estimation. Before he could say a word in return, Nugent left him as abruptly as he had approached him; walking away by himself to the window--and standing there, looking out.

Lucilla had not heard him. She was still pondering, with the same perplexed face. The likeness between the twins was apparently weighing on her mind--an unsolved problem that vexed and irritated it. Without anything said by me to lead to resuming the subject, she returned obstinately to the assertion that she had just made.

"I tell you again I am sensible of a difference between them," she repeated--"though you don't seem to believe me."

I interpreted this uneasy reiteration as meaning that she was rather trying to convince herself than to convince me. In her blind condition, it was doubly and trebly embarrassing not to know one