"Suppose I have been deprived of your keepsake?" he said. "Suppose
somebody whom I would rather not mention, has taken it away from me?"
I instantly understood him. His miserable brother had taken it. My
work-basket was close by. I cut off a lock of my hair, and tied it at
each end with a morsel of my favorite light-blue ribbon.
"Are we friends again, Oscar?" was all I said as I put it into his hand.
He caught me in his arms in a kind of frenzy--holding me to him so
violently that he hurt me; kissing me so fiercely that he frightened me.
Before I had recovered breath enough to speak to him, he had released me,
and had gone out in such headlong haste that he knocked down a little
round table with books on it, and woke my aunt.
The old lady called for me in her most formidable voice, and showed me
the family temper in its sourest aspect. Grosse had gone back to London
without making any apology to her; and Oscar had knocked down her books.
The indignation aroused by these two outrages called loudly for a
victim--and (no one else being near at the moment) selected Me. Miss
Batchford discovered for the first time that she had undertaken too much
in assuming the sole charge of her niece at Ramsgate.
"I decline to accept the entire responsibility," said my aunt. "At my
age, the entire responsibility is too much for me. I shall write to your
father, Lucilla. I always did, and always shall, detest him, as you know.
His views on politics and religion are (in a clergyman) simply
detestable. Still he is your father; and it is a duty on my part, after
what that rude foreigner has said about your health, to offer to restore
you to your father's roof--or, at least, to obtain your father's sanction
to your continuing to remain under my care. This course, in either case
you will observe, relieves me from the entire responsibility. I am doing
nothing to compromise my position. My position is quite plain to me. I
should have formally accepted your father's hospitality on the occasion
of your wedding--if I had been well enough and if the wedding had taken
place. It follows as a matter of course that I may formally report to
your father what the medical opinion is of your health. However brutally
it may have been given, it is a medical opinion--and as such I am bound
to communicate it."
Knowing but too well how bitterly my aunt's aversion to him is
reciprocated by my father, I did my best to combat Miss Batchford's
resolution--without making matters worse by telling her what my motives
really were. With some difficulty I prevailed on her to defer the
proposed report of me for a day or two--and we parted for the night (the
old lady's fits of temper are soon over) as good friends as usual.
This little episode in my narrative of events diverted my mind for the
time from Oscar's strange conduct yesterday evening. But once up here by
myself in my own room, I have been thinking of it, or dreaming of it
(such horrid dreams--I cannot write them down!) almost incessantly from
that time to this. When we meet again to-day--how will he look? what will
he say?
He was right yesterday. I _am_ cold to him; there is some change in me
towards him, which I don't understand myself. My conscience accuses me,
now I am alone--and yet, God knows, it is not my fault. Poor Oscar! Poor
me! I have never longed to see him--since we met at this place--as I long
now. He sometimes comes to breakfast. Will he come to breakfast to-day?
Oh, how my eyes ache! and how obstinately the mist stops in the room!
Suppose I close the window, and go back to bed again for a little while?
_Nine o'clock._--The maid came in half an hour since, and woke me. She
went to open the window as usual. I stopped her.
"Is the mist gone?" I asked.