storm continued all night. The next day a keen wind brought fresh

and blinding falls; by twilight the valley was drifted up and almost

impassable. I had closed my shutter, laid a mat to the door to prevent

the snow from blowing in under it, trimmed my fire, and after

sitting nearly an hour on the hearth listening to the muffled fury

of the tempest, I lit a candle, took down Marmion, and beginning-

'Day set on Norham's castled steep,

And Tweed's fair river broad and deep,

And Cheviot's mountains lone;

The massive towers, the donjon keep,

The flanking walls that round them sweep,

In yellow lustre shone'-

I soon forgot storm in music.

I heard a noise: the wind, I thought, shook the door. No; it was

St. John Rivers, who, lifting the latch, came in out of the frozen

hurricane- the howling darkness- and stood before me: the cloak that

covered his tall figure all white as a glacier. I was almost in

consternation, so little had I expected any guest from the

blocked-up vale that night.

'Any ill news?' I demanded. 'Has anything happened?'

'No. How very easily alarmed you are!' he answered, removing his

cloak and hanging it up against the door, towards which he again

coolly pushed the mat which his entrance had deranged. He stamped

the snow from his boots.

'I shall sully the purity of your floor,' said he, 'but you must

excuse me for once.' Then he approached the fire. 'I have had hard

work to get here, I assure you,' he observed, as he warmed his hands

over the flame. 'One drift took me up to the waist; happily the snow

is quite soft yet.'

'But why are you come?' I could not forbearsaying.

'Rather an inhospitable question to put to a visitor; but since you

ask it, I answer simply to have a little talk with you; I got tired of

my mute books and empty rooms. Besides, since yesterday I have

experienced the excitement of a person to whom a tale has been

half-told, and who is impatient to hear the sequel.'

He sat down. I recalled his singular conduct of yesterday, and

really I began to fear his wits were touched. If he were insane,

however, his was a very cool and collected insanity: I had never

seen that handsome-featured face of his look more like chiselled

marble than it did just now, as he put aside his snow-wet hair from

his forehead and let the firelight shine free on his pale brow and

cheek as pale, where it grieved me to discover the hollow trace of

care or sorrow now so plainly graved. I waited, expecting he would say

something I could at least comprehend; but his hand was now at his

chin, his finger on his lip: he was thinking. It struck me that his

hand looked wasted like his face. A perhaps uncalled-for gush of

pity came over my heart: I was moved to say-

'I wish Diana or Mary would come and live with you: it is too bad

that you should be quite alone; and you are recklessly rash about your

own health.'

'Not at all,' said he: 'I care for myself when necessary. I am well

now. What do you see amiss in me?'

This was said with a careless, abstracted indifference, which

showed that my solicitude was, at least in his opinion, wholly

superfluous. I was silenced.

He still slowly moved his finger over his upper lip, and still

his eye dwelt dreamily on the glowing grate; thinking it urgent to say

something, I asked him presently if he felt any cold draught from

the door, which was behind him.

'No, no!' he responded shortly and somewhat testily.

'Well,' I reflected, 'if you won't talk, you may be still; I'll let

you alone now, and return to my book.'

So I snuffed the candle and resumed the perusal of Marmion. He soon

stirred; my eye was instantly drawn to his movements; he only took out

a morocco pocket-book, thence produced a letter, which he read in

silence, folded it, put it back, relapsed into meditation. It was vain

to try to read with such an inscrutable fixture before me; nor could

I, in my impatience, consent to be dumb; he might rebuff me if he

liked, but talk I would.

'Have you heard from Diana and Mary lately?'

'Not since the letter I showed you a week ago.'

'There has not been any change made about your own arrangements?

You will not be summoned to leave England sooner than you expected?'

'I fear not, indeed: such chance is too good to befall me.' Baffled

so far, I changed my ground. I bethought myself to talk about the

school and my scholars.

'Mary Garrett's mother is better, and Mary came back to the

school this morning, and I shall have four new girls next week from

the Foundry Close- they would have come to-day but for the snow.'

'Indeed!'

'Mr. Oliver pays for two.'

'Does he?'

'He means to give the whole school a treat at Christmas.'

'I know.'

'Was it your suggestion?'

'No.'

'Whose, then?'

'His daughter's, I think.'

'It is like her: she is so good-natured.'

'Yes.'

Again came the blank of a pause: the clock struck eight strokes. It

aroused him; he uncrossed his legs, sat erect, turned to me.

'Leave your book a moment, and come a little nearer the fire,' he

said.

Wondering, and of my wonder finding no end, I complied.

'Half an hour ago,' he pursued, 'I spoke of my impatience to hear

the sequel of a tale: on reflection, I find the matter will be

better managed by my assuming the narrator's part, and converting

you into a listener. Before commencing, it is but fair to warn you

that the story will sound somewhat hackneyed in your ears; but stale

details often regain a degree of freshness when they pass through

new lips. For the rest, whether trite or novel, it is short.

'Twenty years ago, a poor curate- never mind his name at this

moment- fell in love with a rich man's daughter; she fell in love with

him, and married him, against the advice of all her friends, who

consequently disowned her immediately after the wedding. Before two

years passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly side by

side under one slab. (I have seen their grave; it formed part of the

pavement of a huge churchyardsurrounding the grim, soot-black old

daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity received in her lap-

cold as that of the snow-drift I almost stuck fast in to-night.

Charity carried the friendless thing to the house of its rich maternal

relations; it was reared by an aunt-in-law, called (I come to names

now) Mrs. Reed of Gateshead. You start- did you hear a noise? I

daresay it is only a rat scrambling along the rafters of the adjoining

schoolroom: it was a barn before I had it repaired and altered, and

barns are generally haunted by rats.- To proceed. Mrs. Reed kept the

orphan ten years: whether it was happy or not with her, I cannot

say, never having been told; but at the end of that time she

transferred it to a place you know- being no other than Lowood School,

where you so long resided yourself. It seems her career there was very

honourable: from a pupil, she became a teacher, like yourself-
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