The door--the friendly, admirable, judicious door--stopped the coming sermon, in the nick of time, by opening again. Herr Grosse's squat figure and owlish spectacles appeared on the threshold. And behind him (exactly as I had anticipated) stood Nugent Dubourg.
Lucilla turned deadly pale: she had heard the door open, she knew by instinct that the surgeon had come. Oscar got up, stole behind my chair, and whispered to me, "For God's sake, get Nugent out of the room!" I gave him a reassuring squeeze of the hand, and, putting Jicks down on the floor, rose to welcome our good Grosse.
The child, as it happened, was beforehand with me. She and the illustrious oculist had met in the garden at one of the German's professional visits to Lucilla, and had taken an amazing fancy to each other. Herr Grosse never afterwards appeared at the rectory without some unwholesome eatable thing in his pocket for Jicks; who gave him in return as many kisses as he might ask for, and further distinguished him as the only living creature whom she permitted to nurse the disreputable doll. Grasping this same doll now, with both hands, and using it head-foremost, as a kind of battering-ram, Jicks plunged in front of me, and butted with all her might at the surgeon's bandy legs; insisting on a monopoly of his attention before he presumed to speak to any other person in the room. While he was lifting her to a level with his face, and talking to her in his wonderful broken English--while the rector and Mrs. Finch were making the necessary apologies for the child's conduct--Nugent came round from behind Herr Grosse, and drew me mysteriously into a corner of the room. As I followed him, I saw the silent torture of anxiety expressed in Oscar's face as he stood by Lucilla's chair. It did me good; it strung up my resolution to the right pitch; it made me feel myself a match, and more than a match, for Nugent Dubourg.
"I am afraid I behaved in a very odd manner, when we met in the village?" he said. "The fact is, I am not at all well. I have been in a strange feverish state lately. I don't think the air of this place suits me." There he stopped; keeping his eyes steadily fixed on mine, trying to read my mind in my face.