“No, no, sir! think of other subjects, and speak of other things, and in another strain.  Don’t address me as if I were a beauty; I am your plain, Quakerish governess.”

“You are a beauty in my eyes, and a beauty just after the desire of my heart, —­ delicate and aerial.”

“Puny and insignificant, you mean.  You are dreaming, sir, —­ or you are sneering.  For God’s sake don’t be ironical!”

“I will make the world acknowledge you a beauty, too,” he went on, while I really became uneasy at the strain he had adopted, because I felt he was either deluding himself or trying to delude me.  “I will attire my Jane in satin and lace, and she shall have roses in her hair; and I will cover the head I love best with a priceless veil.”

“And then you won’t know me, sir; and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer, but an ape in a harlequin’s jacket —­ a jay in borrowed plumes.  I would as soon see you, Mr. Rochester, tricked out in stage-trappings, as myself clad in a court-lady’s robe; and I don’t call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly:  far too dearly to flatter you.  Don’t flatter me.”

He pursued his theme, however, without noticing my deprecation.  “This very day I shall take you in the carriage to Millcote, and you must choose some dresses for yourself.  I told you we shall be married in four weeks.  The wedding is to take place quietly, in the church down below yonder; and then I shall waft you away at once to town.  After a brief stay there, I shall bear my treasure to regions nearer the sun:  to French vineyards and Italian plains; and she shall see whatever is famous in old story and in modern record:  she shall taste, too, of the life of cities; and she shall learn to value herself by just comparison with others.”

“Shall I travel? —­ and with you, sir?”

“You shall sojourn at Paris, Rome, and Naples:  at Florence, Venice, and Vienna:  all the ground I have wandered over shall be re-trodden by you:  wherever I stamped my hoof, your sylph’s foot shall step also.  Ten years since, I flew through Europe half mad; with disgust, hate, and rage as my companions:  now I shall revisit it healed and cleansed, with a very angel as my comforter.”

I laughed at him as he said this.  “I am not an angel,” I asserted; “and I will not be one till I die:  I will be myself.  Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me —­ for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you:  which I do not at all anticipate.”

“What do you anticipate of me?”

“For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now, —­ a very little while; and then you will turn cool; and then you will be capricious; and then you will be stern, and I shall have much ado to please you:  but when you get well used to me, you will perhaps like me again, —­ like me, I say, not love me.  I suppose your love will effervesce in six months, or less.  I have observed in books written by men, that period assigned as the farthest to which a husband’s ardour extends.  Yet, after all, as a friend and companion, I hope never to become quite distasteful to my dear master.”