“Ah! yes,” he exclaimed, when at last he found the notes he had made upon the case. “I saw the young lady on the twenty-eighth of November. A most peculiar case—most peculiar! Leicester and Franklyn both saw her, but they were just as much puzzled as myself.”
And through his big round horn spectacles he continued reading to himself the several pages of notes.
“Yes,” he remarked at last. “I now recall all the facts. A very curious case. The young lady disappeared from her friends, and was found some days later wandering near Petersfield, in Hampshire, in an exhausted condition. She could not account for her disappearance, or the state in which she was. Her memory had completely gone, and she has not, I believe, yet recovered it.”
“No, she has not,” I said. “But the reason I have ventured to call, Sir Charles, is to hear your opinion on the case.”
“My opinion!” he echoed. “What opinion can I hold when the effect is so plain—loss of memory?”
“Ah! But how could such a state of mind be produced?” I asked.
“You ask me for the cause. That, my dear sir, I cannot say,” was his answer. “There are several causes which would produce a similar effect. Probably it was some great shock. But of what nature we cannot possibly discover unless she herself recovers her normal memory so far as to be able to assist us. I see that I have noted how she constantly repeats the words ‘red, green and gold.’ That combination of colours has apparently impressed itself upon her mind to such an extent that it has become an obsession. Often she will utter no other words than those. She was seen by a number of eminent men, but nobody could suggest any cause other than shock.”
“Is it possible that some drug could have been administered to her?”
“Everything is possible,” Sir Charles answered. “But I know of no drug which would produce such effect. In brief, I confess that I have no idea what can have caused the sudden mental breakdown.”