“And this is Jane Eyre?  Are you coming from Millcote, and on foot?  Yes —­ just one of your tricks:  not to send for a carriage, and come clattering over street and road like a common mortal, but to steal into the vicinage of your home along with twilight, just as if you were a dream or a shade.  What the deuce have you done with yourself this last month?”

“I have been with my aunt, sir, who is dead.”

“A true Janian reply!  Good angels be my guard!  She comes from the other world —­ from the abode of people who are dead; and tells me so when she meets me alone here in the gloaming!  If I dared, I’d touch you, to see if you are substance or shadow, you elf! —­ but I’d as soon offer to take hold of a blue ignis fatuus light in a marsh.  Truant! truant!” he added, when he had paused an instant.  “Absent from me a whole month, and forgetting me quite, I’ll be sworn!”

I knew there would be pleasure in meeting my master again, even though broken by the fear that he was so soon to cease to be my master, and by the knowledge that I was nothing to him:  but there was ever in Mr. Rochester (so at least I thought) such a wealth of the power of communicating happiness, that to taste but of the crumbs he scattered to stray and stranger birds like me, was to feast genially.  His last words were balm:  they seemed to imply that it imported something to him whether I forgot him or not.  And he had spoken of Thornfield as my home —­ would that it were my home!

He did not leave the stile, and I hardly liked to ask to go by.  I inquired soon if he had not been to London.

“Yes; I suppose you found that out by second-sight.”

“Mrs. Fairfax told me in a letter.”

“And did she inform you what I went to do?”

“Oh, yes, sir!  Everybody knew your errand.”

“You must see the carriage, Jane, and tell me if you don’t think it will suit Mrs. Rochester exactly; and whether she won’t look like Queen Boadicea, leaning back against those purple cushions.  I wish, Jane, I were a trifle better adapted to match with her externally.  Tell me now, fairy as you are —­ can’t you give me a charm, or a philter, or something of that sort, to make me a handsome man?”

“It would be past the power of magic, sir;” and, in thought, I added, “A loving eye is all the charm needed:  to such you are handsome enough; or rather your sternness has a power beyond beauty.”

Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible:  in the present instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions.  He seemed to think it too good for common purposes:  it was the real sunshine of feeling —­ he shed it over me now.

“Pass, Janet,” said he, making room for me to cross the stile:  “go up home, and stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend’s threshold.”