The New Magdalen

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--"