The Secret of Wyvern Towers

by T. W. Speight

Any attempt at a cure on his part, as he was not slow to recognize, might have been productive of more harm than good, and possibly have entailed consequences he would have been loath to face. He watched the case with the deepest interest, but beyond prescribing a harmless draft or two, he left nature to work after her own fashion.

At the end of a fortnight Anna fell into another trance-like sleep, and awoke from it her proper self. The two preceding weeks were blotted from her memory. She had merely had a longer and sounder sleep than ordinary, from which she had awaked feeling strangely refreshed.

From that time forward the same thing had happened to her, at irregular intervals, every three or four months. After certain preliminary symptoms, which hardly ever varied, she would fall into a deep sleep, always to awake at that moment of her life which preceded her meeting with the supposed apparition in the gallery. At the end of ten days or a fortnight, and after another sleep, she would become her normal self again.

She had been ten years old at the time of her first attack, and she was now eighteen. A lovely girl (but with no touch of resemblance to Felix), and of an affectionate and amiable disposition; bright and cheerful enough at times, but, for the most part, with a vague shadow of melancholy brooding over her, as of one who realized in all its bitterness the fact that there was about her a something which set her apart from her fellows; for long before now the full measure of her affliction had become known to her.

Mrs. Jenwyn had given Colonel Drelincourt her promise on his deathbed that she would never leave Anna while it was the latter's wish that she should stay with her. In order, however, to make assurance doubly sure, the colonel had left instructions in his will that the sum of two hundred guineas per annum should be paid to Mrs. Jenwyn out of his estate so long as she should retain her position by his daughter's side.

As already remarked, the colonel had bequeathed to Anna all that it was in his power to leave her. An ample sum was settled on her, under the control of trustees, during her minority, and when she should come of age she would find herself mistress of an income of twelve hundred a year, with absolute power over ten thousand pounds of the gross sum capitalized by her father.

About a year before his death, and when he had no prevision of that event being so near, Colonel Drelincourt had caused to be set aside, and specially arranged for their use, a suite of rooms in the left wing of the Towers, to which his daughter and Mrs. Jenwyn could retire whenever Anna's symptoms gave warning that one of her periodical attacks was imminent.

He had also caused a considerable space or ground on the same side of the house to be walled in, so as to form a private garden in which the two could obtain a sufficiency of fresh air and exercise without being overlooked or spied upon by any visitors at the house, or by any casual outsiders, there being a right of public footway through the park at the back of the Towers, as a consequence of which stragglers were sometimes found in those parts of the grounds where they had no business to be.

When, at his father's death, Felix Drelincourt came into the property, matters, so far as they related to his half sister, were in no wise changed. All he did was to cut down the staff of servants, and to request Mrs. Jenwyn to take upon herself the control of the establishment, he himself having no intention at that time of settling permanently at the Towers. Not till after his marriage, some three years later, did he make it his home.

When talking over future arrangements with his prospective wife, he had given Miss Ormsby clearly to understand that his marriage was to alter nothing so far as his half sister was concerned. Anna's home, as heretofore, would still be at the Towers, and the special suite of rooms in the left wing still be reserved for the occupancy of herself and Mrs. Jenwyn at certain seasons.