“Is there immediate danger?” murmured Mr. Mason.

“Pooh!  No —­ a mere scratch.  Don’t be so overcome, man:  bear up!  I’ll fetch a surgeon for you now, myself:  you’ll be able to be removed by morning, I hope.  Jane,” he continued.

“Sir?”

“I shall have to leave you in this room with this gentleman, for an hour, or perhaps two hours:  you will sponge the blood as I do when it returns:  if he feels faint, you will put the glass of water on that stand to his lips, and your salts to his nose.  You will not speak to him on any pretext —­ and —­ Richard, it will be at the peril of your life if you speak to her:  open your lips —­ agitate yourself- -and I’ll not answer for the consequences.”

Again the poor man groaned; he looked as if he dared not move; fear, either of death or of something else, appeared almost to paralyse him.  Mr. Rochester put the now bloody sponge into my hand, and I proceeded to use it as he had done.  He watched me a second, then saying, “Remember! —­ No conversation,” he left the room.  I experienced a strange feeling as the key grated in the lock, and the sound of his retreating step ceased to be heard.

Here then I was in the third storey, fastened into one of its mystic cells; night around me; a pale and bloody spectacle under my eyes and hands; a murderess hardly separated from me by a single door:  yes —­ that was appalling —­ the rest I could bear; but I shuddered at the thought of Grace Poole bursting out upon me.

I must keep to my post, however.  I must watch this ghastly countenance —­ these blue, still lips forbidden to unclose —­ these eyes now shut, now opening, now wandering through the room, now fixing on me, and ever glazed with the dulness of horror.  I must dip my hand again and again in the basin of blood and water, and wipe away the trickling gore.  I must see the light of the unsnuffed candle wane on my employment; the shadows darken on the wrought, antique tapestry round me, and grow black under the hangings of the vast old bed, and quiver strangely over the doors of a great cabinet opposite —­ whose front, divided into twelve panels, bore, in grim design, the heads of the twelve apostles, each enclosed in its separate panel as in a frame; while above them at the top rose an ebon crucifix and a dying Christ.

According as the shifting obscurity and flickering gleam hovered here or glanced there, it was now the bearded physician, Luke, that bent his brow; now St. John’s long hair that waved; and anon the devilish face of Judas, that grew out of the panel, and seemed gathering life and threatening a revelation of the arch-traitor —­ of Satan himself —­ in his subordinate’s form.

Amidst all this, I had to listen as well as watch:  to listen for the movements of the wild beast or the fiend in yonder side den.  But since Mr. Rochester’s visit it seemed spellbound:  all the night I heard but three sounds at three long intervals, —­ a step creak, a momentary renewal of the snarling, canine noise, and a deep human groan.