Her color rose; she put Jicks down on the ground.

"Are you both dumb ?" she asked.

"Oscar! I insist on knowing it--how have you got the nick-name of 'The Blue Man' ?" Left helpless, Oscar (to my disgust) took refuge in a lie--and, worse still, a clumsy lie.

He declared that he had got his nick-name in the nursery, at the time of Lucilla's absence in London, by one day painting his face in the character of Bluebeard to amuse the children! If Lucilla had felt the faintest suspicion of the truth, blind as she was, she must now have discovered it.

As things were, Oscar annoyed and irritated her.
I could see that it cost her a struggle to suppress something like a feeling of contempt for him.