The sense of being on the alert made me wakeful, and two or three times during the night I rose and stood at the top of my staircase, listening. And the third time I did hear something. I heard a faint cry, and presently the soft shutting of a door, then steps in the corridor below, and whispering. I crept half-way down the stairs; the whispering continued. I got to the bottom, and recognized Sarah’s voice muttering to herself. I would rather have again faced Gordon with his revolver than this madwoman; but I was so anxious about Mrs. Rayner that, after a few minutes spent in prayer, I ventured out from the doorway, and found Sarah crouched in a corner muttering to herself. The wretched woman started up on seeing me; but, instead of attempting to approach me, she hung back, moving her still bandaged head and her one free hand restlessly, and saying-- “I’ve done it--I’ve done it! He’ll come back now. I’ve done what he wanted. He can marry the Christie girl now. It’s all right. He’ll come back again now.” With a terrible fear at my heart, I dashed along the corridor to Mrs. Rayner’s room and went straight in. The atmosphere of the room was sickly and stifling. I went up to the bed. Mrs. Rayner was lying with a cloth over her face! I snatched it off. It was steeped in something which I afterwards learnt was chloroform. Thank Heaven, she was alive!--for she was breathing heavily. I rushed to the two windows and flung them wide open, pulled the bell-rope until the house echoed, and moved her arms up and down. The cook and Jane came in, terribly alarmed, in their night gowns. I left them with Mrs. Rayner while I ran downstairs for some brandy. There was some on the sideboard in the dining-room, I knew; and I was returning with it, and was just outside the dining-room door, when I caught sight of a man in the gloom at the end of the passage leading from the hall. He had come from Mr. Rayner’s study, and disappeared in a moment in the darkness. It was impossible to recognize him; but I could not doubt that it was Mr. Rayner. Where was he going? Was he going to escape by the back way? Did he know the house was watched? I made a step forward, anxious to warn him; but he had already disappeared, and I dared not follow him. I crept upstairs, too much agitated to be of any use any longer; but happily Mrs. Rayner was already recovering, and the brandy-and-water restored her entirely to consciousness. I spent the rest of the night in her room, after I had, with the cook’s assistance, persuaded the unhappy lunatic who had done the mischief to return to her own room, where we found, as I had expected, Mrs. Saunders in a stupid, heavy sleep, half in her arm-chair and half on the floor. The cook declined to watch in place of her for the remainder of the night, but as a precaution locked the door on the outside and took the key away. “Now, if Sarah wants to do any more mischief, let her try it on Mrs. Saunders,” said she.