"I should suppose not," I replied. "It's so long since, I have never asked."
"So long since," he repeated--and then considered for a moment.
His reflections ended in a last question.
"She is resigned, I suppose--and everybody about her is resigned--to the idea of her being hopelessly blind for life."
Instead of answering him, I put a question on my side. My heart was beginning to beat rapidly--without my knowing why.
"Mr. Nugent Dubourg," I said, "what have you got in your mind about Lucilla?"
"Madame Pratolungo," he replied, "I have got something in my mind which was put into it by a friend of mine whom I met in America."
"The friend you mentioned in your letter to your brother?"
"The German gentleman whom you propose to introduce to Oscar and Lucilla?"
Nugent Dubourg looked at me attentively; considered with himself for the second time; and answered in these words:
"He is the greatest living authority, and the greatest living operator, in diseases of the eye."
The idea in his mind burst its way into my mind in a moment.
"Gracious God!" I exclaimed, "are you mad enough to suppose that Lucilla's sight can be restored, after a blindness of one-and-twenty years?"
He suddenly held up his hand, in sign to me to be silent.
At the same moment the door opened; and Lucilla (followed by Oscar) entered the room.
THE first impression which poor Miss Finch produced on Nugent Dubourg, was precisely the same as the first impression which she had produced on me.
"Good Heavens!" he cried. "The Dresden Madonna! The Virgin of San Sisto!"
Lucilla had already heard from me of her extraordinary resemblance to the chief figure in Raphael's renowned picture. Nugent's blunt outburst of recognition passed unnoticed by her. She stopped short, in the middle of the room--startled, the instant he spoke, by the extraordinary similarity of his tone and accent to the tone and accent of his brother's voice.
"Oscar," she asked nervously, "are you behind me? or in front of me?" Oscar laughed, and answered "Here!"--speaking behind her. She turned her head towards the place in front of her, from which Nugent had spoken. "Your voice is wonderfully like Oscar's," she said, addressing him timidly. "Is your face exactly like his face, too? May I judge for myself of the likeness between you? I can only do it in one way--by my touch."