"Come," he said, in a commanding voice. "Follow me, Lady Eversleigh."
He still held her hand, and she obeyed him, making her way with some difficulty up the steep and winding staircase.
At last she found herself at the top. A narrow doorway opened before her; and following her companion through this doorway, she emerged on the roof of the tower.
Around her were the ruined battlements, broken away altogether here and there; below her was the craggy hill-side, sloping downwards to the wide expanse of the moorland; above her was the purple sky, flooded with the calm radiance of the moon; but there was no sign of human habitation, no sound of a human voice.
"Where is my husband, Mr. Carrington?" she cried, with a wild alarm, which had but that moment taken possession of her. "This ruin is uninhabited. I saw the empty rooms, through gaps in the broken wall as we came up that staircase. Where is my husband?"
"At Raynham Castle, Lady Eversleigh, to the best of my knowledge," answered the surgeon, with imperturbable calmness.
He had seated himself on one of the broken battlements, in a lounging attitude, with one arm leaning on the ruined stone, and he was looking quietly out at the solitary expanse of barren waste sleeping beneath the moonlight.
Lady Eversleigh looked at him with a countenance that had grown rigid with horror and alarm.
"My husband at Raynham—at Raynham!" she repeated, as if she could not credit the evidence of her own ears. "Am I mad, or are you mad, Mr. Carrington? My husband at Raynham Castle, you say?"
"I cannot undertake to answer positively for the movements of any gentleman; but I should say that, at this present moment, Sir Oswald Eversleigh is in his own house, for which he started some hours ago."