which repulses all our sympathy.  One sees that she is of a nature to dwell upon and treasure up every slight and unkindness, real or fancied, and such natures we know are surer than any others to meet with plenty of this sort of thing.  As the child, so also the woman—­an uninteresting, sententious, pedantic thing; with no experience of the world, and yet with no simplicity or freshness in its stead.  What are her first answers to Mr. Rochester but such as would have quenched all interest, even for a prettier woman, in any man of common knowledge of what was nature—­and especially in a blase monster like him?

* * * * *

But the crowning scene is the offer—­governesses are said to be sly on such occasions, but Jane out-governesses them all—­little Becky would have blushed for her.  They are sitting together at the foot of the old chestnut tree, as we have already mentioned, towards the close of evening, and Mr. Rochester is informing her, with his usual delicacy of language, that he is engaged to Miss Ingram—­“a strapper!  Jane, a real strapper!”—­and that as soon as he brings home his bride to Thornfield, she, the governess, must “trot forthwith”—­but that he shall make it his duty to look out for employment and an asylum for her—­indeed, that he has already heard of a charming situation in the depths of Ireland—­all with a brutal jocoseness which most women of spirit, unless grievously despairing of any other lover, would have resented, and any woman of sense would have seen through.  But Jane, that profound reader of the human heart, and especially of Mr. Rochester’s, does neither.  She meekly hopes she may be allowed to stay where she is till she has found another shelter to betake herself to—­she does not fancy going to Ireland—­Why?

  “It is a long way off, Sir.”  “No matter—­a girl of your sense will not
  object to the voyage or the distance.”  “Not the voyage, but the
  distance, Sir; and then the sea is a barrier—­” “From what, Jane?”
  “From England, and from Thornfield; and—­” “Well?” “From you, Sir.”
 —­vol. ii, p. 205.

and then the lady bursts into tears in the most approved fashion.

Although so clever in giving hints, how wonderfully slow she is in taking them!  Even when, tired of his cat’s play, Mr. Rochester proceeds to rather indubitable demonstrations of affection—­“enclosing me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips”—­Jane has no idea what he can mean.  Some ladies would have thought it high time to leave the Squire alone with his chestnut tree; or, at all events, unnecessary to keep up that tone of high-souled feminine obtusity which they are quite justified in adopting if gentlemen will not speak out—­but Jane again does neither.  Not that we say she was wrong, but quite the reverse, considering the circumstances of the case—­ Mr. Rochester was her master, and “Duchess or nothing” was her first duty—­only she was not quite so artless as the author would have us suppose.