“Will you glance at that first?” she murmured. “You will not understand it; but it will pave the way to an explanation.”
He took the paper from her hand, and read these four enigmatic words:—
“Be prepared. Winsom Wyllie.”
“Winsom Wyllie!” he ejaculated in astonishment, looking up.
She shivered, and gave a little gulp.
“He is the cause, he is the cause!” she whispered, and appeared for the moment incapable of further speech. And then suddenly she collected herself.
“I must appear insane to you,” she said. “Perhaps it is true that an exaggerated fear has unhinged my mind for the moment. But I will tell you my story.”
“If you please,” he said; and she began:—
“My mother died when I was quite young, leaving me the sole charge of a preoccupied father. He was a man of science, devoted to the pursuit of insects, and for the greater part of his life was engaged in procuring material for his great work on the Butterflies of Europe. After my mother’s death, I was put to a school in Cheltenham, where I remained for a number of years, forgotten, but on the whole happy, doing fair credit to my training, and spending my holidays, for the most part, at the homes of the various mistresses. When I was eighteen, a chance visit to the Cotswold Hills reminded my father of my existence. He was growing old, and his eyesight dim, and it occurred to him that I might prove useful to him in his occupation. He took me from school, and thenceforth I was his companion and assistant in his varied journeyings at home and abroad. I had no other relation in the world, and no fixed home; but I confess I enjoyed the life, with its freedom from restraint, and its perpetual charms of change and open-air employment. My father, as each specimen was captured, was in the habit of sitting down and making on the spot an exact water-colour drawing of it to scale. This work, finding I had a natural facility with the brush, he deputed to me as also much of the netting of the insects themselves, at which, being active and clear-sighted, I soon proved myself an expert. I was quite happy and engrossed in my curious life until the day when there entered into it a stranger of an unusual and sinister cast. His name was Winsom Wyllie.”
She paused a moment in some agitation, and, putting her handkerchief to her lips, averted her face yet a little more.