“The doctor presently called me, and I went in.  Nurse Forrester was apparently lying awake in bed, but she was not awake.  She slept the sleep of death.  Her eyes were open, but glazed, and she was already cold.  Mannering declared that she had been dead for a good many hours.  Yet, save for a slight but hardly unnatural pallor, not a trace of death marked the poor little creature.  An expression of wonder seemed to sit on her features, but otherwise she was looking much as I had last seen her, when she said ‘Good-night.’  Everything appeared to be orderly in the room.  It was now flooded with the first light of a sunny morning, for she had drawn her blind up and thrown her window wide open.  The poor lady passed out of life without a sound or signal to indicate trouble, for in the silence of night Jane Bond must have heard any alarm had she raised one.  To me it seemed impossible to believe that we gazed upon a corpse.  But so it was, though, as a matter of form, the doctor took certain measures to restore her.  But animation was not suspended; it had passed beyond recall.

“There was held a post-mortem examination, and an inquest, of course; and Mannering, who felt deep professional interest, asked a friend from Plymouth to conduct the examination.  Their report astounded all concerned and crowned the mystery, for not a trace of any physical trouble could be discovered to explain Nurse Forrester’s death.  She was thin, but organically sound in every particular, nor could the slightest trace of poison be reported.  Life had simply left her without any physical reason.  Search proved that she had brought no drugs or any sort of physic with her, and no information to cast the least light came from the institution for which she worked.  She was a favorite there, and the news of her sudden death brought sorrow to her many personal friends.

“The physicians felt their failure to find a natural and scientific cause for her death.  Indeed, Dr. Mordred, from Plymouth, an eminent pathologist, trembled not a little about it, as Mannering afterwards told me.  The finite mind of science hates, apparently, to be faced with any mystery beyond its power to explain.  It regards such an incident as a challenge to human intellect, and does not remember that we are encompassed with mystery as with a garment, and that every day and every night are laden with phenomena for which man cannot account, and never will.

“Nurse Forrester’s relations—­a sister and an old mother—­came to the funeral.  Also her dearest woman friend, another professional nurse, whose name I do not recollect.  She was buried at Chadlands, and her grave lies near our graves.  Mary loves to tend it still, though to her the dead woman is but a name.  Yet to this day she declares that she can remember Nurse Forrester’s voice through her fever—­gentle, yet musical and cheerful.  As for me, I never mourned so brief an acquaintance so heartily.  To part with the bright creature, so full of life and kindliness, and to stand beside her corpse but eight or nine hours afterwards, was a chastening and sad experience.”