just cause why they should not be joined together, a voice interposes to forbid the marriage.  There is an impediment, and a serious one.  The bridegroom has a wife not only living, but living under the very roof of Thornfield Hall.  Hers was that discordant laugh which had so often caught Jane’s ear; she it was who in her malice had tried to burn Mr. Rochester in his bed—­who had visited Jane by night and torn her veil, and whose attendant was that same pretended sew-woman who had so strongly excited Jane’s curiosity.  For Mr. Rochester’s wife is a creature, half fiend, half maniac, whom he had married in a distant part of the world, and whom now, in self-constituted code of morality, he had thought it his right, and even his duty, to supersede by a more agreeable companion.  Now follow scenes of a truly tragic power.  This is the grand crisis in Jane’s life.  Her whole soul is wrapt up in Mr. Rochester.  He has broken her trust, but not diminished her love.  He entreats her to accept all that he still can give, his heart and his home; he pleads with the agony not only of a man who has never known what it was to conquer a passion, but of one who, by that same self-constituted code, now burns to atone for a disappointed crime.  There is no one to help her against him or against herself.  Jane had no friends to stand by her at the altar, and she has none to support her now she is plucked away from it.  There is no one to be offended or disgraced at her following him to the sunny land of Italy, as he proposes, till the maniac should die.  There is no duty to any one but to herself, and this feeble reed quivers and trembles beneath the overwhelming weight of love and sophistry opposed to it.  But Jane triumphs; in the middle of the night she rises—­glides out of her room—­takes off her shoes as she passes Mr. Rochester’s chamber;—­leaves the house, and casts herself upon a world more desert than ever to her—­

  Without a shilling and without a friend.

Thus the great deed of self-conquest is accomplished; Jane has passed through the fire of temptation from without and from within; her character is stamped from that day; we need therefore follow her no further into wanderings and sufferings which, though not unmixed with plunder from Minerva-lane, occupy some of, on the whole, the most striking chapters in the book.  Virtue of course finds her reward.  The maniac wife sets fire to Thornfield Hall, and perishes herself in the flames.  Mr. Rochester, in endeavouring to save her, loses the sight of his eyes.  Jane rejoins her blind master; they are married, after which of course the happy man recovers his sight.