Lucilla was still sitting in the place which she had occupied when I withdrew. On hearing the door open, and a man's footsteps entering, she of course assumed that the man was Oscar. She had penetrated his object in leaving her to follow me out, and it had not improved her temper.
"Oh?" she said. "You have come back at last? I thought you had offered yourself as Madame Pratolungo's escort to the rectory." She stopped, with a sudden frown. Her quick ears had detected my return into the room. "Oscar!" she exclaimed, "what does this mean? Madame Pratolungo and I have nothing more to say to each other. What has she come back for? Why don't you answer? This is infamous! I shall leave the room!"
The utterance of that final threat was followed so rapidly by its execution that, before Nugent (standing between her and the door) could get out of her way, she came in violent contact with him. She instantly caught him by the arm, and shook him angrily. "What does your silence mean? Is it at Madame Pratolungo's instigation that you are insulting me?"
I had just opened my lips to make one more attempt at reconciliation, by saying some pacifying words to her--when she planted that last sting in me. French flesh and blood (whatever English flesh and blood might have done) could bear no more. I silently turned my back on her, in a rage.
At the same moment, Nugent's eyes brightened as if a new idea had struck him. He gave me one significant look--and answered her in his brother's character. Whether he was possessed at the moment by some demon of mischief; or whether he had the idea of trying to make Oscar's peace for him, before Oscar returned--was more than I could say at the time. I ought to have stopped it--I know. But my temper was in a flame. I was as spiteful as a cat and as fierce as a bear. I said to myself (in your English idiom), She wants taking down a peg; quite right, Mr. Nugent; do it. Shocking! shameful! no words are bad enough for me: give it me well. Ah, Heaven! what is a human being in a rage? On my sacred word of honor, nothing but a human beast! The next time it happens to You, look at yourself in the glass; and you will find your soul gone out of you at your face, and nothing left but an animal--and a bad, a villainous bad animal too!