“My disposition is not so bad as you think:  I am passionate, but not vindictive.  Many a time, as a little child, I should have been glad to love you if you would have let me; and I long earnestly to be reconciled to you now:  kiss me, aunt.”

I approached my cheek to her lips:  she would not touch it.  She said I oppressed her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded water.  As I laid her down —­ for I raised her and supported her on my arm while she drank —­ I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine:  the feeble fingers shrank from my touch —­ the glazing eyes shunned my gaze.

“Love me, then, or hate me, as you will,” I said at last, “you have my full and free forgiveness:  ask now for God’s, and be at peace.”

Poor, suffering woman! it was too late for her to make now the effort to change her habitual frame of mind:  living, she had ever hated me —­ dying, she must hate me still.

The nurse now entered, and Bessie followed.  I yet lingered half-an-hour longer, hoping to see some sign of amity:  but she gave none.  She was fast relapsing into stupor; nor did her mind again rally:  at twelve o’clock that night she died.  I was not present to close her eyes, nor were either of her daughters.  They came to tell us the next morning that all was over.  She was by that time laid out.  Eliza and I went to look at her:  Georgiana, who had burst out into loud weeping, said she dared not go.  There was stretched Sarah Reed’s once robust and active frame, rigid and still:  her eye of flint was covered with its cold lid; her brow and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable soul.  A strange and solemn object was that corpse to me.  I gazed on it with gloom and pain:  nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or hopeful, or subduing did it inspire; only a grating anguish for her woes —­ not my loss —­ and a sombre tearless dismay at the fearfulness of death in such a form.

Eliza surveyed her parent calmly.  After a silence of some minutes she observed —

“With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age:  her life was shortened by trouble.”  And then a spasm constricted her mouth for an instant:  as it passed away she turned and left the room, and so did I. Neither of us had dropt a tear.

CHAPTER XXII

Mr. Rochester had given me but one week’s leave of absence:  yet a month elapsed before I quitted Gateshead.  I wished to leave immediately after the funeral, but Georgiana entreated me to stay till she could get off to London, whither she was now at last invited by her uncle, Mr. Gibson, who had come down to direct his sister’s interment and settle the family affairs.  Georgiana said she dreaded being left alone with Eliza; from her she got neither sympathy in her dejection, support in her fears, nor aid in her preparations; so I bore with her feeble-minded