"What is this, Lucy?" said he, looking down, at me narrowly. "Here is the old excitement. Ha! the nun again?"
But I utterly denied the charge: I was vexed to be suspected of a second illusion. He was sceptical.
"She has been, as sure as I live," said he; "her figure crossing your eyes leaves on them a peculiar gleam and expression not to be mistaken."
"She has not been," I persisted: for, indeed, I could deny her apparition with truth.
"The old symptoms are there," he affirmed; "a particular pale, and what the Scotch call a 'raised' look."
He was so obstinate, I thought it better to tell him what I really had seen. Of course with him, it was held to be another effect of the same cause: it was all optical illusion—nervous malady, and so on. Not one bit did I believe him; but I dared not contradict: doctors are so self-opinionated, so immovable in their dry, materialist views.
Rosine brought the shawl, and I was bundled into the carriage.
