"That is how I shall always find out the difference between them. If Oscar's brother ever attempts to play tricks upon my blindness (he is quite capable of it--he laughed at my blindness!), that is how I shall find him out. I told you before I saw him that I hated him. I hate him still."
She struck the first chords on the piano, with an obstinate frown on her pretty brow. Our little evening concert began.
I WAS far from sharing Lucilla's opinion of Nugent Dubourg. His enormous self-confidence was, to my mind, too amusing to be in the least offensive. I liked the spirit and gaiety of the young fellow. He came much nearer than his brother did to my ideal of the dash and resolution which ought to distinguish a man on the right side of thirty. So far as my experience of them went, Nugent was (in the popular English phrase) good company--and Oscar was not. My nationality leads me to attach great importance to social qualities. The higher virtues of a man only show themselves occasionally on compulsion, His social qualities come familiarly in contact with us every day of our lives. I like to be cheerful: I am all for the social qualities.
There was one little obstacle in those early days, which set itself up between my sympathies and Nugent.
I was thoroughly at a loss to understand the impression which Lucilla had produced on him.
The same constraint which had, in such a marked manner, subdued him at his first interview with her, still fettered him in the time when they became better acquainted with one another. He was never in high spirits in her presence. Mr. Finch could talk him down without difficulty, if Mr. Finch's daughter happened to be by. Even when he was vaporing about himself, and telling us of the wonderful things he meant to do in Painting, Lucilla's appearance was enough to check him, if she happened to come into the room. On the first day when he showed me his American sketches (I define them, if you ask my private opinion, as false pretenses of Art, by a dashing amateur)--on that day, he was in full flow; marching up and down the room, smacking his forehead, and announcing himself quite gravely as "the coming man" in landscape painting.