Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman—­almost a bride—­was a cold, solitary girl again:  her life was pale; her prospects were desolate.  A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples; drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hay-field and corn-field lay a frozen shroud; lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and fragrant as groves between the tropics, now spread waste, wild, and white as pine forests in wintry Norway.

My hopes were all dead—­struck with a subtle doom, such as in one night fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt.  I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive.  I looked at my love, that feeling which was my master’s—­which he had created:  it shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr. Rochester’s arms—­it could not derive warmth from his breast.  Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted—­confidence destroyed!  Mr. Rochester was not to me what he had been; for he was not what I had thought him.  I would not ascribe vice to him; I would not say he had betrayed me:  but the attribute of stainless truth was gone from his idea; and from his presence I must go; that I perceived well.  When—­how—­whither, I could not yet discern; but he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from Thornfield.  Real affection, it seemed, he could not have for me; it had been only fitful passion; that was balked; he would want me no more.  I should fear even to cross his path now:  my view must be hateful to him.  Oh, how blind had been my eyes! how weak my conduct!

MADAME BECK

(From ‘Villette’)

“You ayre Engliss?” said a voice at my elbow.  I almost bounded, so unexpected was the sound; so certain had I been of solitude.

No ghost stood beside me, nor anything of spectral aspect; merely a motherly, dumpy little woman, in a large shawl, a wrapping-gown, and a clean, trim, nightcap.

I said I was English, and immediately, without further prelude, we fell to a most remarkable conversation.  Madame Beck (for Madame Beck it was; she had entered by a little door behind me, and being shod with the shoes of silence, I had heard neither her entrance nor approach)—­Madame Beck had exhausted her command of insular speech when she said “You ayre Engliss,” and she now proceeded to work away volubly in her own tongue.  I answered in mine.  She partly understood me, but as I did not at all understand her—­though we made together an awful clamor (anything like madame’s gift of utterance I had not hitherto heard or imagined)—­we achieved little progress.  She rang, ere long, for aid; which arrived in the shape of a “maitresse,”