She was on the terrace which juts over the rock the castle is built on, and which looks out over the purple world of climbing moor.

She saw from there the returning party of shooters and gillies winding its way slowly through the heather, following a burden carried on a stretcher of fir boughs.

Some of her women guests were with her, and one of them said afterward that when she first caught sight of the moving figures she got up slowly and crept to the stone balustrade with a crouching movement almost like a young leopardess preparing to spring.

But she only watched, making neither sound nor movement until the cortege was near enough for her to see that every man's head was bowed upon his breast, and not one was covered.
Then she said, quite slowly, "They--have--taken off--their bonnets," and fell upon the terrace like a dropped stone.
It was because of this that the girl said that she was dead when I was born.

It must have seemed almost as if she were not a living thing.
She did not open her eyes or make a sound; she lay white and cold.
The celebrated physicians who came from London talked of catalepsy and afterward wrote scientific articles which tried to explain her condition.