Isn't that enough--with his shy disposition, poor fellow--to account for his being embarrassed?
Besides," she added, speaking more seriously, "perhaps he saw in my manner towards him that he had disappointed and pained me." "How ?" I asked.
"Don't you remember his once acknowledging in the garden that he had painted his face in the character of Bluebeard, to amuse the children?
It was not delicate, it was not affectionate--it was not like him--to show such insensibility as that to his brother's shocking disfigurement.

He ought to have remembered it, he ought to have respected it.

There! we will say no more.

We will go indoors and open the piano and try to forget." Even Oscar's clumsy excuse in the garden--instead of confirming her suspicion--had lent itself to strengthen the foregone conclusion rooted in her mind! At that critical moment--before I had consulted with the twin-brothers as to what was to be done next--it was impossible to say more.

I felt seriously alarmed when I thought of the future.