"No!" she said. "I am quite composed again; I claim your promise. Examine me here. I must and will have my first look at Oscar in this room."
(I was afraid--literally afraid--to turn my eyes Oscar's way. I glanced at Nugent instead. There was a devilish smile on his face that it nearly drove me mad to see.)
"You must and weel?" repeated Grosse. "Now, mind!" He took out his watch.
"I give you one little minutes, to think in. If you don't come with me in that time, you shall find it is I who must and weel. Now!"
"Why do you object to go into your room?" I asked.
"Because I want everybody to see me," she answered. "How many of you are there here?"
"There are five of us. Mr. and Mrs. Finch; Mr. Nugent Dubourg; Oscar, and myself."
"I wish there were five hundred of you, instead of five?" she burst out.
"Why?"
"Because you would see me pick out Oscar from all the rest, the instant the bandage was off my eyes!"
Still holding to her own fatal conviction that the image in her mind of Oscar was the right one! For the second time, though I felt the longing in me to look at him, I shrank from doing it.
Herr Grosse put his watch back in his pocket.
"The minutes is passed," he said. "Will you come into the odder rooms?
Will you understand that I cannot properly examine you before all these peoples? Say, my lofely Feench--Yes? or No?"
"No!" she cried obstinately, with a childish stamp of her foot. "I insist on showing everybody that I can pick out Oscar, the moment I open my eyes."
Herr Grosse buttoned his coat, settled his owlish spectacles firmly on his nose, and took up his hat. "Goot morning," he said. "I have nothing more to do with you or your eyes. Cure yourself, you little-spitfire-Feench. I am going back to London."
He opened the door. Even Lucilla was obliged to yield, when the surgeon in attendance on her threatened to throw up the case.
"You brute!" she said indignantly--and took his arm again.
Grosse indulged himself in his diabolical grin. "Wait till you are able to use your eyes, my lofe. Then you will see what a brutes I am!" With those words he took her out.