“Missis is awake,” said she; “I have told her you are here:  come and let us see if she will know you.”

I did not need to be guided to the well-known room, to which I had so often been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former days.  I hastened before Bessie; I softly opened the door:  a shaded light stood on the table, for it was now getting dark.  There was the great four-post bed with amber hangings as of old; there the toilet-table, the armchair, and the footstool, at which I had a hundred times been sentenced to kneel, to ask pardon for offences by me uncommitted.  I looked into a certain corner near, half-expecting to see the slim outline of a once dreaded switch which used to lurk there, waiting to leap out imp-like and lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck.  I approached the bed; I opened the curtains and leant over the high-piled pillows.

Well did I remember Mrs. Reed’s face, and I eagerly sought the familiar image.  It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion.  I had left this woman in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and a strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries —­ to be reconciled and clasp hands in amity.

The well-known face was there:  stern, relentless as ever —­ there was that peculiar eye which nothing could melt, and the somewhat raised, imperious, despotic eyebrow.  How often had it lowered on me menace and hate! and how the recollection of childhood’s terrors and sorrows revived as I traced its harsh line now!  And yet I stooped down and kissed her:  she looked at me.

“Is this Jane Eyre?” she said.

“Yes, Aunt Reed.  How are you, dear aunt?”

I had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again:  I thought it no sin to forget and break that vow now.  My fingers had fastened on her hand which lay outside the sheet:  had she pressed mine kindly, I should at that moment have experienced true pleasure.  But unimpressionable natures are not so soon softened, nor are natural antipathies so readily eradicated.  Mrs. Reed took her hand away, and, turning her face rather from me, she remarked that the night was warm.  Again she regarded me so icily, I felt at once that her opinion of me —­ her feeling towards me —­ was unchanged and unchangeable.  I knew by her stony eye —­ opaque to tenderness, indissoluble to tears —­ that she was resolved to consider me bad to the last; because to believe me good would give her no generous pleasure:  only a sense of mortification.

I felt pain, and then I felt ire; and then I felt a determination to subdue her —­ to be her mistress in spite both of her nature and her will.  My tears had risen, just as in childhood:  I ordered them back to their source.  I brought a chair to the bed-head:  I sat down and leaned over the pillow.