I know well enough what it was, now. On my oath as an honest woman, I failed to see it at the time. We are not always (suffer me to remind you) consistent with ourselves. The cleverest people commit occasional lapses into stupidity--just as the stupid people light up with gleams of intelligence at certain times. You may have shown your usual good sense in conducting your affairs on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in the week.
But it doesn't at all follow from this, that you may not make a fool of yourself on Thursday. Account for it as you may--for a much longer time than it suits my self-esteem to reckon up, I suspected nothing and discovered nothing. I noted his behavior in Lucilla's presence as odd behavior and unaccountable behavior--and that was all.
During the first fortnight just mentioned, the London doctor came to see Oscar.
He left again, perfectly satisfied with the results of his treatment. The dreadful epileptic malady would torture the patient and shock the friends about him no more: the marriage might safely be celebrated at the time agreed on. Oscar was cured.
The doctor's visit--reviving our interest in observing the effect of the medicine--also revived the subject of Oscar's false position towards Lucilla. Nugent and I held a debate about it between ourselves. I opened the interview by suggesting that we should unite our forces to persuade his brother into taking the frank and manly course. Nugent neither said Yes nor No to that proposal at the outset. He, who made up his mind at a moment's notice about everything else, took time to decide on this one occasion.
"There is something that I want to know first," he said. "I want to understand this curious antipathy of Lucilla's which my brother regards with so much alarm. Can you explain it?"
"Has Oscar attempted to explain it?" I inquired on my side.
"He mentioned it in one of his letters to me; and he tried to explain it, when I asked (on my arrival at Browndown) if Lucilla had discovered the change in his complexion. But he failed entirely to meet my difficulty in understanding the case."