The New Magdalen

'if you disapprove of the marriage?'

Lady Janet interposed once more. 'Nonsense, Horace,' she said. 'Julian congratulates you, of course.'

Julian coldly and absently echoed the words. 'Oh, yes! I congratulate you, of course.'

Lady Janet returned to the main object of the interview.

'Now we thoroughly understand one another,' she said, 'let us speak of a lady who has dropped out of the conversation for the last minute or two. I mean, Julian, the mysterious lady of your letter. We are alone, as you desired. Lift the veil, my reverend nephew, which hides her from mortal eyes! Blush, if you like—and can. Is she the future Mrs. Julian Gray?'

'She is a perfect stranger to me,' Julian answered, quietly.

'A perfect stranger! You wrote me word you were interested in her.'

'I am interested in her. And, what is more, you are interested in her, too.'

Lady Janet's fingers drummed impatiently on the table. 'Have I not warned you, Julian, that I hate mysteries? Will you, or will you not, explain yourself?'

Before it was possible to answer, Horace rose from his chair. 'Perhaps I am in the way?' he said.

Julian signed to him to sit down again.

'I have already told Lady Janet that you are not in the way,' he answered. 'I now tell you—as Miss Roseberry's future husband—that you, too, have an interest in hearing what I have to say.'

Horace resumed his seat with an air of suspicious surprise. Julian addressed himself to Lady Janet.

'You have often heard me speak,' he began, 'of my old friend and school-fellow, John Cressingham?'

'Yes. The English consul at Mannheim?'

'The same. When I returned from the country I found among my other letters a long letter from the consul. I have brought it with me, and I propose to read certain passages from it, which tell a very strange story more plainly and more credibly than I can tell it in my own words.'

'Will it be very long?' inquired Lady Janet, looking with some alarm at the closely written sheets of paper which her nephew spread open before him.

Horace followed with a question on his side.

'You are sure I am interested in it?' he asked. 'The consul at Mannheim is a total stranger to me.'

'I answer for it,' replied Julian, gravely, 'neither my aunt's patience nor yours, Horace, will be thrown away if you will favor me by listening attentively to what I am about to read.'

With those words he began his first extract from the consul's letter.

* * * ''My memory is a bad one for dates. But full three months must have passed since information was sent to me of an English patient, received at the hospital here, whose case I, as English consul, might feel an interest in investigating.

''I went the same day to the hospital, and was taken to the bedside.

''The patient was a woman—young, and (when in health), I should think, very pretty. When I first saw her she looked, to my uninstructed eye, like a dead woman. I noticed that her head had a bandage over it, and I asked what was the nature of the injury that she had received. The answer informed me that the poor creature had been present, nobody knew why or wherefore, at a skirmish or night attack between the Germans and the French, and that the injury to her head had been inflicted by a fragment of a German shell.''

Horace—thus far leaning back carelessly in his chair—suddenly raised himself and exclaimed, 'Good heavens! can this be the woman I saw laid out for dead in the French cottage?'

'It is impossible for me to say,' replied Julian. 'Listen to the rest of it. The consul's letter may answer your question.'

He went on with his reading:

''The wounded woman had been reported dead, and had been left by the French in their retreat, at the time when the German forces took possession of the enemy's position. She was found on a bed in a cottage by the director of the German ambulance—'

'Ignatius Wetzel?' cried Horace.

'Ignatius Wetzel,' repeated Julian, looking at the letter.

'It is the same!' said Horace. 'Lady Janet, we are really interested in this. You remember my telling you how I first met with Grace? And you have heard more about it since, no doubt, from Grace herself?'

'She has a horror of referring to that part of her journey home,' replied Lady Janet. 'She mentioned her having been stopped on the frontier, and her finding herself accidentally in the company of another Englishwoman, a perfect stranger to her. I naturally asked questions on my side, and was shocked to hear that she had seen the woman killed by a German shell almost close at her side. Neither she nor I have had any relish for returning to the subject since. You were quite right, Julian, to avoid speaking of it while she was in the room. I understand it all now. Grace, I suppose, mentioned my name to her fellow-traveler. The woman is, no doubt, in want of assistance, and she applies to me through you. I will help her; but she must not come here until I have prepared Grace for seeing her again, a living woman. For the present there is no reason why they should meet.'

'I am not sure about that,' said Julian, in low tones, without looking up at his aunt.

'What do you mean? Is the mystery not at an end yet?'

'The mystery has not even begun yet. Let my friend the consul proceed.'

Julian returned for the second time to his extract from the letter: