“Ah! no!” she cried. “You misjudge me! He was never my lover, although I confess to you that I—I loved him.”
And she buried her face upon my shoulder, and sobbed as though her overburdened heart would break.
CHAPTER XXX
THE SILENT MAN’S STORY
On the following morning I entered Dr. Macfarlane’s consulting-room in response to a letter from him.
“Your foundling is a lot better, Pickering,” exclaimed the great lunacy specialist, rising and giving me his hand. “I’ve got him round at last. Not only is he quite rational, but he has found his voice, or as much of it as he will ever have. Brand, the surgeon, has discovered that he has an injury to the tongue which prevents him properly articulating.”
“Is he quite in his right mind?” I asked, eagerly.
“As right as you are, my dear fellow. I thought from the first it was only temporary,” he answered. “He has told me his story, and, by Jove! it’s a remarkable one.”
“What account does he give of himself?”
“Oh, you’d better come with me down to Ealing, and hear it from his own lips. I’m going to High Elms in half an hour.”
When the Mysterious Man entered the doctor’s private room at the asylum I saw at once what a change had been wrought in him. Neatly dressed in blue serge, his grey hair was well-trimmed, and he no longer wore that long Rip Van Winkle beard of which the hands of the Thrush had made such fun. He was now shaven, with a well-twisted white moustache, smart, fresh-looking, and no longer decrepit. He walked with springy step, and seemed at least twenty years younger. Only when he spoke one realized his infirmity, although he seemed an educated man. His mouth emitted a strange, hollow sound, and several letters he could not pronounce intelligibly.