A duplicate key of the door of communication between the two sides of the house was given to me; and I left the room.
Before performing my errand, I went for a minute into my bedchamber to put away my hat and parasol.

Returning into the corridor, and passing the door of the sitting-room, I found that it had been left ajar by some one who had entered after I had left; and I heard Lucilla's voice say, "Take that letter out of the envelope, and read it to me." I pursued my way along the passage--very slowly, I own--and I heard the first sentences of the letter which I had written under Lucilla's dictation, read aloud to her in the old nurse's voice.

The incurable suspicion of the blind--always abandoned to the same melancholy distrust of the persons about them; always doubting whether some deceit is not being practiced on them by the happy people who can see--had urged Lucilla, even in the trifling matter of the letter, to put me to the test, behind my back.

She was using Zillah's eyes to make sure that I had really written all that she had dictated to me--exactly as, on many an after occasion, she used my eyes to make sure of Zillah's complete performance of tasks allotted to her in the house.

No experience of the faithful devotion of those who live with them ever thoroughly satisfies the blind.