The garden was a wide inclosure, surrounded with walls so high as to exclude every glimpse of prospect; a covered verandah ran down one side, and broad walks bordered a middle space divided into scores of little beds:  these beds were assigned as gardens for the pupils to cultivate, and each bed had an owner.  When full of flowers they would doubtless look pretty; but now, at the latter end of January, all was wintry blight and brown decay.  I shuddered as I stood and looked round me:  it was an inclement day for outdoor exercise; not positively rainy, but darkened by a drizzling yellow fog; all under foot was still soaking wet with the floods of yesterday.  The stronger among the girls ran about and engaged in active games, but sundry pale and thin ones herded together for shelter and warmth in the verandah; and amongst these, as the dense mist penetrated to their shivering frames, I heard frequently the sound of a hollow cough.

As yet I had spoken to no one, nor did anybody seem to take notice of me; I stood lonely enough:  but to that feeling of isolation I was accustomed; it did not oppress me much.  I leant against a pillar of the verandah, drew my grey mantle close about me, and, trying to forget the cold which nipped me without, and the unsatisfied hunger which gnawed me within, delivered myself up to the employment of watching and thinking.  My reflections were too undefined and fragmentary to merit record:  I hardly yet knew where I was; Gateshead and my past life seemed floated away to an immeasurable distance; the present was vague and strange, and of the future I could form no conjecture.  I looked round the convent-like garden, and then up at the house —­ a large building, half of which seemed grey and old, the other half quite new.  The new part, containing the schoolroom and dormitory, was lit by mullioned and latticed windows, which gave it a church-like aspect; a stone tablet over the door bore this inscription:-

“Lowood Institution. —­ This portion was rebuilt A.D. —­ , by Naomi Brocklehurst, of Brocklehurst Hall, in this county.”

“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” —­ St. Matt. v. 16.

I read these words over and over again:  I felt that an explanation belonged to them, and was unable fully to penetrate their import.  I was still pondering the signification of “Institution,” and endeavouring to make out a connection between the first words and the verse of Scripture, when the sound of a cough close behind me made me turn my head.  I saw a girl sitting on a stone bench near; she was bent over a book, on the perusal of which she seemed intent:  from where I stood I could see the title —­ it was “Rasselas;” a name that struck me as strange, and consequently attractive.  In turning a leaf she happened to look up, and I said to her directly —

“Is your book interesting?” I had already formed the intention of asking her to lend it to me some day.