I bethought myself to go upstairs and see how the dying woman sped, who lay there almost unheeded:  the very servants paid her but a remittent attention:  the hired nurse, being little looked after, would slip out of the room whenever she could.  Bessie was faithful; but she had her own family to mind, and could only come occasionally to the hall.  I found the sick-room unwatched, as I had expected:  no nurse was there; the patient lay still, and seemingly lethargic; her livid face sunk in the pillows:  the fire was dying in the grate.  I renewed the fuel, re-arranged the bedclothes, gazed awhile on her who could not now gaze on me, and then I moved away to the window.

The rain beat strongly against the panes, the wind blew tempestuously:  “One lies there,” I thought, “who will soon be beyond the war of earthly elements.  Whither will that spirit —­ now struggling to quit its material tenement —­ flit when at length released?”

In pondering the great mystery, I thought of Helen Burns, recalled her dying words —­ her faith —­ her doctrine of the equality of disembodied souls.  I was still listening in thought to her well-remembered tones —­ still picturing her pale and spiritual aspect, her wasted face and sublime gaze, as she lay on her placid deathbed, and whispered her longing to be restored to her divine Father’s bosom —­ when a feeble voice murmured from the couch behind:  “Who is that?”

I knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for days:  was she reviving?  I went up to her.

“It is I, Aunt Reed.”

“Who —­ I?” was her answer.  “Who are you?” looking at me with surprise and a sort of alarm, but still not wildly.  “You are quite a stranger to me —­ where is Bessie?”

“She is at the lodge, aunt.”

“Aunt,” she repeated.  “Who calls me aunt?  You are not one of the Gibsons; and yet I know you —­ that face, and the eyes and forehead, are quiet familiar to me:  you are like —­ why, you are like Jane Eyre!”

I said nothing:  I was afraid of occasioning some shock by declaring my identity.

“Yet,” said she, “I am afraid it is a mistake:  my thoughts deceive me.  I wished to see Jane Eyre, and I fancy a likeness where none exists:  besides, in eight years she must be so changed.”  I now gently assured her that I was the person she supposed and desired me to be:  and seeing that I was understood, and that her senses were quite collected, I explained how Bessie had sent her husband to fetch me from Thornfield.

“I am very ill, I know,” she said ere long.  “I was trying to turn myself a few minutes since, and find I cannot move a limb.  It is as well I should ease my mind before I die:  what we think little of in health, burdens us at such an hour as the present is to me.  Is the nurse here? or is there no one in the room but you?”

I assured her we were alone.

“Well, I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now.  One was in breaking the promise which I gave my husband to bring you up as my own child; the other —­ " she stopped.  “After all, it is of no great importance, perhaps,” she murmured to herself:  “and then I may get better; and to humble myself so to her is painful.”