“Shall I send for Dr Fothergill?” I suggested anxiously. She had promised to make a revelation, and I foresaw the possibility that if her mind became unhinged I should learn nothing.
“No,” she answered, wearily sinking into a chair. “Forgive me. I am afraid I miscalculated my strength. I thought I had quite recovered, but the slight exertion of trying to recall the past brings back those fearful pains that have of late so tortured me. The blow must have injured my brain.”
“The blow! What blow?” I cried.
“Cannot you see?” she said, placing her hand to her hair and parting it at the side.
I bent to examine, and there saw, half concealed by the skillful manner in which her hair had been dressed by her maid, unmistakable signs of a terrible blow that had been dealt her. It was strange. I also had been felled at the moment I had discovered her creeping silently into that mysterious room in Gloucester Square. Had she also fallen by the same unknown hand? Evidently the injury to her brain was the result of the crushing blow she had received.
“Who caused this?” I inquired. “You have been struck from behind!”
“Yes, by an enemy. But ask me nothing, ask me nothing,” she groaned. “I—cannot think—I cannot talk. The place goes round—round.”
The neat maid entered with her young mistress’s hat at that moment, but seeing her mistress lying back in the chair pale and motionless, the girl halted on the threshold, scared.
“Send a messenger at once for Dr Fothergill,” I commanded. “Miss Dora has been taken ill again,” and while she flew to execute my orders I crossed to the recumbent invalid and tenderly chafed her hands. They seemed cold and clammy. Her wild staring eyes were fixed upon me and she shuddered, but to my questions she gave incoherent replies, lapsing gradually into a state of semi-insensibility.
On the eve of revealing the secret of Sybil, she had been thwarted by mental weakness. Full of pain and anxiety I watched her, reflecting that this added one more to the string of misfortunes consequent upon my strange union. Even my friends seemed by the conspiring vagaries of Fate prevented from rendering me any aid.