"Has any one told her the truth?" he asked.
"You mean that Colonel Menendez is dead?"
"Yes," replied Dr. Rolleston. "I understood that no one had told her?"
"No one has done so to my knowledge," said Harley.
"Then the sympathy between them must have been very acute," murmured
the physician, "for she certainly knows!"
"Do you really think she knows?" I asked.
"I am certain of it. She must have had knowledge of a danger to be
apprehended, and being awakened by the sound of the rifle shot, have
realized by a sort of intuition that the expected tragedy had happened.
I should say, from the presence of a small bruise which I found upon
her forehead, that she had actually walked out into the corridor."
"Walked?" I cried.
"Yes," said the physician. "She is a shell-shock case, of course, and
we sometimes find that a second shock counteracts the effect of the
first. This, temporarily at any rate, seems to have happened to-night.
She is now in a very curious state: a form of hysteria, no doubt, but
very curious all the same."
"Miss Beverley is with her?" I asked.
Dr. Rolleston nodded affirmatively.
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