“C’est le ma gouverante!” said she, pointing to me, and addressing her nurse; who answered —

“Mais oui, certainement.”

“Are they foreigners?” I inquired, amazed at hearing the French language.

“The nurse is a foreigner, and Adela was born on the Continent; and, I believe, never left it till within six months ago.  When she first came here she could speak no English; now she can make shift to talk it a little:  I don’t understand her, she mixes it so with French; but you will make out her meaning very well, I dare say.”

Fortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a French lady; and as I had always made a point of conversing with Madame Pierrot as often as I could, and had besides, during the last seven years, learnt a portion of French by heart daily —­ applying myself to take pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as possible the pronunciation of my teacher, I had acquired a certain degree of readiness and correctness in the language, and was not likely to be much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela.  She came and shook hand with me when she heard that I was her governess; and as I led her in to breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her own tongue:  she replied briefly at first, but after we were seated at the table, and she had examined me some ten minutes with her large hazel eyes, she suddenly commenced chattering fluently.

“Ah!” cried she, in French, “you speak my language as well as Mr. Rochester does:  I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can Sophie.  She will be glad:  nobody here understands her:  Madame Fairfax is all English.  Sophie is my nurse; she came with me over the sea in a great ship with a chimney that smoked —­ how it did smoke! —­ and I was sick, and so was Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester.  Mr. Rochester lay down on a sofa in a pretty room called the salon, and Sophie and I had little beds in another place.  I nearly fell out of mine; it was like a shelf.  And Mademoiselle —­ what is your name?”

“Eyre —­ Jane Eyre.”

“Aire?  Bah!  I cannot say it.  Well, our ship stopped in the morning, before it was quite daylight, at a great city —­ a huge city, with very dark houses and all smoky; not at all like the pretty clean town I came from; and Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms over a plank to the land, and Sophie came after, and we all got into a coach, which took us to a beautiful large house, larger than this and finer, called an hotel.  We stayed there nearly a week:  I and Sophie used to walk every day in a great green place full of trees, called the Park; and there were many children there besides me, and a pond with beautiful birds in it, that I fed with crumbs.”

“Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?” asked Mrs. Fairfax.

I understood her very well, for I had been accustomed to the fluent tongue of Madame Pierrot.

“I wish,” continued the good lady, “you would ask her a question or two about her parents:  I wonder if she remembers them?”