When I found myself inside the room which had been a mystery to me for so long, nothing struck me at first but a sense of cold and darkness. There was only one window, which was barred on the inside; the fog still hung about the place, and the little light there had been all day was fading fast, for it was five o’clock. But, as I stepped forward farther into the room, I drew my breath fast in horror. For I became aware of a smell of damp and decay; I felt that the boards of the floor under the carpet were rotten and yielding to my feet, and I saw that the paper was peeling off the wet and mouldy walls, and that the water was slowly trickling down them. “Oh, Mrs. Rayner,” I cried, aghast, “is this your room--where you sleep?” “I have slept in it for three years,” said she. “If my husband had had his will, it would have been my tomb.” CHAPTER XXX. The heartless cruelty of Mr. Rayner in allowing his poor submissive wife to live in a room such as he would not for the world have kept horse, or dog, or even violin in shocked and repelled me, and wrung from me the cry-- “The villain!” “Hush!” said she. “He may be listening to us now.” “I don’t care!” cried I passionately. “I am glad if he hears--if he hears me say that this morning I hoped he would escape, but that now I hope they will find him, for they cannot possibly punish him as he deserves. Oh, Mrs. Rayner, and I--I sleeping up in the turret to be out of the damp! How you must have hated me!” “I did once, I own,” she whispered, sinking into a chair and taking the hands I stretched out towards her. “But it was foolish of me, for you did not know--how could you know?” “But why did you stay? Why did you say nothing about it? And why were you not glad to go upstairs, instead of begging as you did to remain here?” “Because,” she whispered, her nervous agitation coming back again, “I knew that while I remained down here they would not kill me outright; they could not let me die down here and introduce doctors and strangers to examine into the cause of my death into this room. I knew that a change of room was my death-warrant; and so it would have been, but for the accident which happened to Sarah on the very night when, but for you, I should have been sleeping upstairs ready to her hand.” I staggered back, suddenly remembering the message Mr. Rayner had in his letter told me to give to Sarah. It was this--“Tell Sarah not to forget the work she has to do in my absence.” And I remembered also the grim way in which she had received it. Could he have meant that? Mrs. Rayner continued-- “He hates violence; all was to have been over by his return, and he free to marry you.” “But he couldn’t. I was engaged to Laurence, Mrs. Rayner.” She gave a little bitter smile.