“Miss Eyre, are you ill?” said Bessie.

“What a dreadful noise! it went quite through me!” exclaimed Abbot.

“Take me out!  Let me go into the nursery!” was my cry.

“What for?  Are you hurt?  Have you seen something?” again demanded Bessie.

“Oh!  I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come.”  I had now got hold of Bessie’s hand, and she did not snatch it from me.

“She has screamed out on purpose,” declared Abbot, in some disgust.  “And what a scream!  If she had been in great pain one would have excused it, but she only wanted to bring us all here:  I know her naughty tricks.”

“What is all this?” demanded another voice peremptorily; and Mrs. Reed came along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling stormily.  “Abbot and Bessie, I believe I gave orders that Jane Eyre should be left in the red-room till I came to her myself.”

“Miss Jane screamed so loud, ma’am,” pleaded Bessie.

“Let her go,” was the only answer.  “Loose Bessie’s hand, child:  you cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured.  I abhor artifice, particularly in children; it is my duty to show you that tricks will not answer:  you will now stay here an hour longer, and it is only on condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall liberate you then.”

“O aunt! have pity!  Forgive me!  I cannot endure it —­ let me be punished some other way!  I shall be killed if —­ "

“Silence!  This violence is all most repulsive:”  and so, no doubt, she felt it.  I was a precocious actress in her eyes; she sincerely looked on me as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous duplicity.

Bessie and Abbot having retreated, Mrs. Reed, impatient of my now frantic anguish and wild sobs, abruptly thrust me back and locked me in, without farther parley.  I heard her sweeping away; and soon after she was gone, I suppose I had a species of fit:  unconsciousness closed the scene.

CHAPTER III

The next thing I remember is, waking up with a feeling as if I had had a frightful nightmare, and seeing before me a terrible red glare, crossed with thick black bars.  I heard voices, too, speaking with a hollow sound, and as if muffled by a rush of wind or water:  agitation, uncertainty, and an all-predominating sense of terror confused my faculties.  Ere long, I became aware that some one was handling me; lifting me up and supporting me in a sitting posture, and that more tenderly than I had ever been raised or upheld before.  I rested my head against a pillow or an arm, and felt easy.

In five minutes more the cloud of bewilderment dissolved:  I knew quite well that I was in my own bed, and that the red glare was the nursery fire.  It was night:  a candle burnt on the table; Bessie stood at the bed-foot with a basin in her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair near my pillow, leaning over me.