The brothers noiselessly changed places. Oscar took her hand, standing
exactly where Nugent had stood.
"Oscar!" she said.
"Right again," I told her.
At a sign from Nugent, Oscar took her hand for the second time. She
repeated his name. At a sign from me, the brothers noiselessly placed
themselves, one on either side of her--Oscar on the left; Nugent on the
right. I gave them the signal; and they each took one of her hands at the
same moment. This time, she waited a little longer before she spoke. When
she did speak, she was right once more. She turned smiling, towards the
left side, pointed to him as he stood by her, and said, "Oscar!"
We were all three equally surprised. I examined Oscar's hand and Nugent's
hand alternately. Except the fatal difference in the color, they were, to
all intents and purposes, the same hands--the same size, the same shape,
the same texture of skin; no scar or mark on the hand of one to
distinguish it from the hand of the other. By what mysterious process of
divination had she succeeded in discovering which was which?
She was unwilling, or unable, to reply to that question plainly.
"Something in me answers to one of them and not to the other," she said.
"What is it?" I asked.
"I don't know. It answers to Oscar. It doesn't answer to Nugent--that's
all."
She stopped any further inquiries by proposing that we should finish the
evening with some music, in her own sitting-room, on the other side of
the house. When we were seated together at the pianoforte--with the
twin-brothers established as our audience at the other end of the
room--she whispered in my ear:
"I'll tell _you!_"
"Tell me what?"
"How I know which is which when they both of them take my hand. When
Oscar takes it, a delicious tingle runs from his hand into mine, and
steals all over me. I can't describe it any better than that."
"I understand. And when Nugent takes your hand, what do you feel?"
"Nothing!"
"And that is how you found out the difference between them down-stairs?"
"That is how I shall always find out the difference between them. If
Oscar's brother ever attempts to play tricks upon my blindness (he is
quite capable of it--he laughed at my blindness!), that is how I shall
find him out. I told you before I saw him that I hated him. I hate him
still."
"My dear Lucilla!"
"I hate him still!"
She struck the first chords on the piano, with an obstinate frown on her
pretty brow. Our little evening concert began.