“‘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.”