On the wedding morning a stranger stood up in the church and said the marriage could not go on. Mr Rochester had a wife living, married fifteen years before in Jamaica. He took the whole party back to Thornfield and unlocked the door on the third storey. In that room a figure ran on all fours, snatching and growling, with wild hair going grey. This is my wife, he said, and this is what I wished to have. He asked me to go with him to the south of France and live as his wife in everything but name. I loved him more in that hour than I had ever loved him. I left the house before dawn with twenty shillings, and I did not say goodbye.