different from the first three months of stillness, monotony, and

solitude I had passed beneath its roof! All sad feelings seemed now

driven from the house, all gloomy associations forgotten: there was

life everywhere, movement all day long. You could not now traverse the

gallery, once so hushed, nor enter the front chambers, once so

tenantless, without encountering a smart lady's-maid or a dandy valet.

The kitchen, the butler's pantry, the servants' hall, the

entrance hall, were equally alive; and the saloons were only left void

and still when the blue sky and halcyon sunshine of the genial

spring weather called their occupants out into the grounds. Even

when that weather was broken, and continuous rain set in for some

days, no damp seemed cast over enjoyment: indoor amusements only

became more lively and varied, in consequence of the stop put to

outdoor gaiety.

I wondered what they were going to do the first evening a change of

entertainment was proposed: they spoke of 'playing charades,' but in

my ignorance I did not understand the term. The servants were called

in, the dining-room tables wheeled away, the lights otherwise

disposed, the chairs placed in a semicircle opposite the arch. While

Mr. Rochester and the other gentlemen directed these alterations,

the ladies were running up and down stairs ringing for their maids.

Mrs. Fairfax was summoned to give information respecting the resources

of the house in shawls, dresses, draperies of any kind; and certain

wardrobes of the third storey were ransacked, and their contents, in

the shape of brocaded and hooped petticoats, satin sacques, black

modes, lace lappets, etc., were brought down in armfuls by the

abigails; then a selection was made, and such things as were chosen

were carried to the boudoir within the drawing-room.

Meantime, Mr. Rochester had again summoned the ladies round him,

and was selecting certain of their number to be of his party. 'Miss

Ingram is mine, of course,' said he: afterwards he named the two

Misses Eshton, and Mrs. Dent. He looked at me: I happened to be near

him, as I had been fastening the clasp of Mrs. Dent's bracelet,

which had got loose.

'Will you play?' he asked. I shook my head. He did not insist,

which I rather feared he would have done; he allowed me to return

quietly to my usual seat.

He and his aids now withdrew behind the curtain: the other party,

which was headed by Colonel Dent, sat down on the crescent of

chairs. One of the gentlemen, Mr. Eshton, observing me, seemed to

propose that I should be asked to join them; but Lady Ingram instantly

negatived the notion.

'No,' I heard her say: 'she looks too stupid for any game of the

sort.'

Ere long a bell tinkled, and the curtain drew up. Within the

arch, the bulky figure of Sir George Lynn, whom Mr. Rochester had

likewise chosen, was seen enveloped in a white sheet: before him, on a

table, lay open a large book; and at his side stood Amy Eshton, draped

in Mr. Rochester's cloak, and holding a book in her hand. Somebody,

unseen, rang the bell merrily; then Adele (who had insisted on being

one of her guardian's party), bounded forward, scattering round her

the contents of a basket of flowers she carried on her arm. Then

appeared the magnificent figure of Miss Ingram, clad in white, a

long veil on her head, and a wreath of roses round her brow; by her

side walked Mr. Rochester, and together they drew near the table. They

knelt; while Mrs. Dent and Louisa Eshton, dressed also in white,

took up their stations behind them. A ceremony followed, in dumb show,

in which it was easy to recognise the pantomime of a marriage. At

its termination, Colonel Dent, and his party consulted in whispers for

two minutes, then the Colonel called out-

'Bride!' Mr. Rochester bowed, and the curtain fell.

A considerable interval elapsed before it again rose. Its second

rising displayed a more elaborately prepared scene than the last.

The drawing-room, as I have before observed, was raised two steps

above the dining-room, and on the top of the upper step, placed a yard

or two back within the room, appeared a large marble basin, which I

recognised as an ornament of the conservatory- where it usually stood,

surrounded by exotics, and tenanted by gold fish- and whence it must

have been transported with some trouble, on account of its size and

weight.

Seated on the carpet, by the side of this basin, was seen Mr.

Rochester, costumed in shawls, with a turban on his head. His dark

eyes and swarthy skin and Paynim features suited the costume

exactly: he looked the very model of an Eastern emir, an agent or a

victim of the bowstring. Presently advanced into view Miss Ingram.

She, too, was attired in oriental fashion: a crimson scarf tied

sash-like round the waist; an embroidered handkerchief knotted about

her temples; her beautifully moulded arms bare, one of them upraised

in the act of supporting a pitcher, poised gracefully on her head.

Both her cast of form and feature, her complexion and her general air,

suggested the idea of some Israelitish princess of the patriarchal

days; and such was doubtless the character she intended to represent.

She approached the basin, and bent over it as if to fill her

pitcher; she again lifted it to her head. The personage on the

well-brink now seemed to accost her; to make some request:- 'She

hasted, let down her pitcher on her hand, and gave him to drink.' From

the bosom of his robe he then produced a casket, opened it and

showed magnificent bracelets and earrings; she acted astonishment

and admiration; kneeling, he laid the treasure at her feet;

incredulity and delight were expressed by her looks and gestures;

the stranger fastened the bracelets on her arms and the rings in her

ears. It was Eliezer and Rebecca: the camels only were wanting.

The divining party again laid their heads together: apparently they

could not agree about the word or syllable the scene illustrated.

Colonel Dent, their spokesman, demanded 'the tableau of the whole';

whereupon the curtain again descended.

On its third rising only a portion of the drawing-room was

disclosed; the rest being concealed by a screen, hung with some sort

of dark and coarse drapery. The marble basin was removed; in its place

stood a deal table and a kitchen chair: these objects were visible

by a very dim light proceeding from a horn lantern, the wax candles

being all extinguished.

Amidst this sordid scene, sat a man with his clenched hands resting

on his knees, and his eyes bent on the ground. I knew Mr. Rochester;

though the begrimed face, the disordered dress (his coat hanging loose

from one arm, as if it had been almost torn from his back in a

scuffle), the desperate and scowling countenance the rough,

bristling hair might well have disguised him. As he moved, a chain

clanked; to his wrists were attached fetters.

'Bridewell!' exclaimed Colonel Dent, and the charade was solved.

A sufficient interval having elapsed for the performers to resume

their ordinary costume, they re-entered the dining-room. Mr. Rochester

led in Miss Ingram; she was complimenting him on his acting.

'Do you know,' said she, 'that, of the three characters, I liked

you in the last best? Oh, had you but lived a few years earlier,

what a gallant gentleman-highwayman you would have made!'

'Is all the soot washed from my face?' he asked, turning it towards

her.

'Alas! yes: the more's the pity! Nothing could be more becoming

to your complexion than that ruffian's rouge.'

'You would like a hero of the road then?'

'An English hero of the road would be the next best thing to an

Italian bandit; and that could only be surpassed by a Levantine

pirate.'

'Well, whatever I am, remember you are my wife; we were married

an hour since, in the presence of all these witnesses.' She giggled,

and her colour rose.

'Now, Dent,' continued Mr. Rochester, 'it is your turn.' And as the

other party withdrew, he and his band took the vacated seats. Miss

Ingram placed herself at her leader's right hand; the other diviners

filled the chairs on each side of him and her. I did not now watch the

actors; I no longer waited with interest for the curtain to rise; my

attention was absorbed by the spectators; my eyes, erewhile fixed on

the arch, were now irresistibly attracted to the semicircle of chairs.

What charade Colonel Dent and his party played, what word they

chose, how they acquitted themselves, I no longer remember; but I

still see the consultation which followed each scene: I see Mr.

Rochester turn to Miss Ingram, and Miss Ingram to him; I see her

incline her head towards him, till the jetty curls almost touch his

shoulder and wave against his cheek; I hear their mutual

whisperings; I recall their interchanged glances; and something even

of the feeling roused by the spectacle returns in memory at this

moment.

I have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr. Rochester: I

could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to

notice me- because I might pass hours in his presence, and he would

never once turn his eyes in my direction- because I saw all his

attentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me

with the hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and

imperious eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as

from an object too mean to merit observation. I could not unlove

him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady- because I

read daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting her-

because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship which, if

careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek, was yet, in

its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very pride,

irresistible.

There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances,

though much to create despair. Much too, you will think, reader, to

engender jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be

jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram's. But I was not jealous: or very

rarely;- the nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by

that word. Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too

inferior to excite the feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean

what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine: she had a

fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her

heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no

unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good;

she was not original: she used to repeat sounding phrases from

books: she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own. She

advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the

sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her.

Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to a

spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Adele: pushing her

away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach her;

sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating her with

coldness and acrimony. Other eyes besides mine watched these

manifestations of character- watched them closely, keenly, shrewdly.

Yes; the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over

his intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this

sagacity- this guardedness of his- this perfect, clear consciousness

of his fair one's defects- this obvious absence of passion in his

sentiments towards her, that my ever-torturing pain arose.

I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political

reasons, because her rank and connections suited him; I felt he had

not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted

to win from him that treasure. This was the point- this was where

the nerve was touched and teased- this was where the fever was

sustained and fed: she could not charm him.

If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and

sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face,

turned to the wall, and (figuratively) have died to them. If Miss

Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour,

kindness, sense, I should have had one vital struggle with two tigers-

jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should

have admired her- acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for

the rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper

would have been my admiration- the more truly tranquil my

quiescence. But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram's

efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester, to witness their repeated

failure- herself unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying

that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming

herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled

further and further what she wished to allure- to witness this, was to

be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthlessrestraint.

Because, when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded.

Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester's breast and

fell harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand,

have quivered keen in his proud heart- have called love into his stern

eye, and softness into his sardonic face; or, better still, without

weapons a silent conquest might have been won.

'Why can she not influence him more, when she is privileged to draw

so near to him?' I asked myself. 'Surely she cannot truly like him, or

not like him with true affection! If she did, she need not coin her

smiles so lavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, manufacture

airs so elaborate, graces so multitudinous. It seems to me that she

might, by merely sitting quietly at his side, saying little and

looking less, get nigher his heart. I have seen in his face a far

different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so

vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not

elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had

but to accept it- to answer what he asked without pretension, to

address him when needful without grimace- and it increased and grew

kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam. How

will she manage to please him when they are married? I do not think

she will manage it; and yet it might be managed; and his wife might, I

verily believe, be the very happiest woman the sun shines on.'

I have not yet said anything condemnatory of Mr. Rochester's

project of marrying for interest and connections. It surprised me when

I first discovered that such was his intention: I had thought him a

man unlikely to be influenced by motives so commonplace in his

choice of a wife; but the longer I considered the position, education,

etc., of the parties, the less I felt justified in judging and blaming

either him or Miss Ingram for acting in conformity to ideas and

principles instilled into them, doubtless, from their childhood. All

their class held these principles: I supposed, then, they had

reasons for holding them such as I could not fathom. It seemed to me

that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom only

such a wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of the

advantages to the husband's own happiness offered by this plan

convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption

of which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world

would act as I wished to act.

But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very lenient to

my master: I was forgetting all his faults, for which I had once

kept a sharp look-out. It had formerly been my endeavour to study

all sides of his character: to take the bad with the good; and from

the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no

bad. The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me

once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their

presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively

insipid. And as for the vague something- was it a sinister or a

sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression?- that opened upon a

careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before

one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something

which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering

amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground

quiver and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld

still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves.

Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare- to divine it; and I

thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the

abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature.

Meantime, while I thought only of my master and his future bride-

saw only them, heard only their discourse, and considered only their

movements of importance- the rest of the party were occupied with

their own separate interests and pleasures. The Ladies Lynn and Ingram

continued to consort in solemn conferences, where they nodded their

two turbans at each other, and held up their four hands in confronting

gestures of surprise, or mystery, or horror, according to the theme on

which their gossip ran, like a pair of magnified puppets. Mild Mrs.

Dent talked with good-natured Mrs. Eshton; and the two sometimes

bestowed a courteous word or smile on me. Sir George Lynn, Colonel

Dent, and Mr. Eshton discussed politics, or county affairs, or justice

business. Lord Ingram flirted with Amy Eshton; Louisa played and

sang to and with one of the Messrs. Lynn; and Mary Ingram listened

languidly to the gallant speeches of the other. Sometimes all, as with

one consent, suspended their by-play to observe and listen to the

principal actors: for, after all, Mr. Rochester and- because closely

connected with him- Miss Ingram were the life and soul of the party.

If he was absent from the room an hour, a perceptible dulness seemed

to steal over the spirits of his guests; and his re-entrance was

sure to give a fresh impulse to the vivacity of conversation.

The want of his animating influence appeared to be peculiarly

felt one day that he had been summoned to Millcote on business, and

was not likely to return till late. The afternoon was wet: a walk

the party had proposed to take to see a gipsy camp, lately pitched

on a common beyond Hay, was consequently deferred. Some of the

gentlemen were gone to the stables: the younger ones, together with

the younger ladies, were playing billiards in the billiard-room. The

dowagers Ingram and Lynn sought solace in a quiet game at cards.

Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity,

some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into

conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and

airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the

library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and

prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of

absence. The room and the house were silent: only now and then the

merriment of the billiard-players was heard from above.

It was verging on dusk, and the dock had already given warning of

the hour to dress for dinner, when little Adele, who knelt by me in

the drawing-room window-seat, suddenly exclaimed-

'Voila Monsieur Rochester, qui revient!'

I turned, and Miss Ingram darted forwards from her sofa: the

others, too, looked up from their several occupations; for at the same

time a crunching of wheels and a splashing tramp of horse-hoofs became

audible on the wet gravel. A post-chaise was approaching.

'What can possess him to come home in that style?' said Miss

Ingram. 'He rode Mesrour (the black horse), did he not, when he went

out? and Pilot was with him:- what has he done with the animals?'

As she said this, she approached her tall person and ample garments

so near the window, that I was obliged to bend back almost to the

breaking of my spine: in her eagerness she did not observe me at

first, but when she did, she curled her lip and moved to another

casement. The post-chaise stopped; the driver rang the door-bell,

and a gentleman alighted attired in travelling garb; but it was not

Mr. Rochester; it was a tall, fashionable-looking man, a stranger.

'How provoking!' exclaimed Miss Ingram: 'you tiresome monkey!'

(apostrophising Adele), 'who perched you up in the window to give

false intelligence?' and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I