In silence she bowed gracefully, and then looked at me with astonishment, apparently wondering what I, a perfect stranger, required of her.
"Miss Elma Heath, I presume?" I exclaimed at last. "May I introduce myself to you? My name is Gordon Gregg, English by birth, cosmopolitan by instinct. I have come here to ask you a question—a question that concerns yourself. Lydia Moreton has sent me to you."
I noticed that her great brown eyes watched my lips and not my face.
Her own lips moved, but she looked at me with an inexpressible sadness. No sound escaped her.
I stood rigid before her as one turned to stone, for in that instant, in a flash indeed, I realized the awful truth.
She was both deaf and dumb!
She raised her clasped hands to me in silence, yet with tears welling in her splendid eyes.
I saw that upon her wrists were a pair of bright steel gyves.
"What is this place?" I demanded of the woman in the religious habit, when I recovered from the shock of the poor girl's terrible affliction. "Where am I?"
"This is the Castle of Kajana—the criminal lunatic asylum of Finland," was her answer. "The prisoner, as you see, has lost both speech and hearing."