‘A strange affair!’ I said, in a low voice: then, looking at her fixedly—‘Did Mr. Rochester wake nobody? Did no one hear him move?’ She again raised her eyes to me, and this time there was something of consciousness in their expression. She seemed to examine me warily; then she answered— ‘The servants sleep so […]
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I both wished and feared to see Mr. Rochester on the day which followed this sleepless night: I wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to meet his eye. During the early part of the morning, I momentarily expected his coming; he was not in the frequent habit of entering the schoolroom, but he […]
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He held out his hand; I gave him mine: he took it first in one, them in both his own. ‘You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a debt. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been tolerable to me in the character of […]
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He listened very gravely; his face, as I went on, expressed more concern than astonishment; he did not immediately speak when I had concluded. ‘Shall I call Mrs. Fairfax?’ I asked. ‘Mrs. Fairfax? No; what the deuce would you call her for? What can she do? Let her sleep unmolested.’ ‘Then I will fetch Leah, […]
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‘Was that Grace Poole? and is she possessed with a devil?’ thought I. Impossible now to remain longer by myself: I must go to Mrs. Fairfax. I hurried on my frock and a shawl; I withdrew the bolt and opened the door with a trembling hand. There was a candle burning just outside, and on […]
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Though I had now extinguished my candle and was laid down in bed, I could not sleep for thinking of his look when he paused in the avenue, and told how his destiny had risen up before him, and dared him to be happy at Thornfield. ‘Why not?’ I asked myself. ‘What alienates him from […]
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It was not till after I had withdrawn to my own chamber for the night, that I steadily reviewed the tale Mr. Rochester had told me. As he had said, there was probably nothing at all extraordinary in the substance of the narrative itself: a wealthy Englishman’s passion for a French dancer, and her treachery […]
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I almost expected a rebuff for this hardly well-timed question, but, on the contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, he turned his eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his brow. ‘Oh, I had forgotten Celine! Well, to resume. When I saw my charmer thus come in accompanied by a cavalier, […]
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Mr. Rochester did, on a future occasion, explain it. It was one afternoon, when he chanced to meet me and Adele in the grounds: and while she played with Pilot and her shuttlecock, he asked me to walk up and down a long beech avenue within sight of her. He then said that she was […]
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‘Repentance is said to be its cure, sir.’‘It is not its cure. Reformation may be its cure; and I could reform—I have strength yet for that—if—but where is the use of thinking of it, hampered, burdened, cursed as I am? Besides, since happiness is irrevocably denied me, I have a right to get pleasure out […]
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