The Secret of Wyvern Towers

by T. W. Speight

The child, who from her birth had been of a highly excitable temperament, with hysterical tendencies, gave one piercing scream, and fell to the ground in a fit, which was followed by several others, and for some days her life was despaired of.

Gradually, however, she regained her health, and everybody hoped--her father, of course, most of all--that the shock her system had undergone had left no ill effects behind it.

One of the colonel's first acts after his daughter's seizure had been to send for Mrs. Jenwyn, with whose services, only a little while before, he had seen fit to dispense. It was Mrs. Jenwyn who had nursed his wife through the long illness which had preceded her death, and it was in fulfilment of Mrs. Drelincourt's dying request that he had installed her in the dual position of nurse and governess to his motherless girl, who, in the course of time, had learned to love her almost, if not quite, as well as the parent she had lost.

Whether it was a feeling of jealousy that his child should care so much for any one but himself, or some other whim, which caused him to give Mrs. Jenwyn notice to leave, was known only to himself. In any case, Anna took the separation greatly to heart, far more so than her father was aware of, for the child's deepest moods were silent ones; of what she felt most she talked least, and the colonel was not skilled in reading below the surface.

Now, however, he blamed himself with undue severity for having sent Mrs. Jenwyn about her business. Again and again he told himself, most unreasonably, that had she been on the spot the mischance would never have happened. It was some consolation to him to witness the naïve and touching delight with which Anna welcomed Mrs. Jenwyn's return.

For all that, as he quitted the room, leaving them together, he could not help saying to himself, with a touch of bitterness, "She loves that woman better than she loves me."

Unfortunately, the colonel's fondly cherished hope that the shock to his daughter's system would entail no after consequences was not destined to be fulfilled. To all appearance, Anna had regained her health and strength in full measure, and her fright was a matter six months old, when, without any warning, so to speak, an unaccountable change came over her which found its physical expression in a state of irritability and low fever, supplemented by insomnia. Dr. Carew was called in, and prescribed, but declined to commit himself to any expression of opinion.

On the fifth day from the beginning of her attack, Anna fell into a deep, trance-like sleep which lasted eighteen hours. When at length she awoke, everything that had happened to her during the six months which had intervened since the date of her fright was lost to her memory. She went back and took up her life again at the point where consciousness had left her at the moment of her scare in the gallery.

All Mrs. Jenwyn had taught her in the interim was clean gone. A book half read at the time she now began afresh and finished, and she resumed the practice of a piece of music on which she had been engaged during the forenoon of that unfortunate day. The break in her memory was absolute and complete.

By Dr. Carew's recommendation, no attempt was made to enlighten her. Everybody about her accommodated themselves to circumstances as she believed them to be. The doctor trusted to time. It was all he could do.