the earth through the open window; the heavy, sombre furniture; the
daintiness and the alertness in the many flowers and few womanly
gew-gaws: these too I shall remember in a tranquillity that cannot
change.

A sudden, trembling glimmer at the window lit the garden and,
instantaneously, the distant hills; lit also the figures of Jane and
Mr. Rochester beneath the trees. They entered the house, and once more
Jane drew the bolts against that phantom fear. A tinge of scarlet
stood in her cheeks, an added lustre in her eyes. They were strange
lovers, these two--like frost upon a cypress tree; yet summer lay all
around us.

I bade them good night and ascended to the little room prepared for
me. There was a great pincushion on the sprigged and portly toilet
table, and I laboured till the constellations had changed beyond my
window, in printing from a box of tiny pins upon that lavendered
mound, "Ave, Ave, atque Vale!"

Far in the night a dreadful sound woke me. I rose and looked out of
the window, and heard again, deep and reverberating, Pilot baying I
know not what light minions of the moon. The Great Bear wheeled
faintly clear in the dark zenith, but the borders of the east were
grey as glass; and far away a fierce hound was answering from his
echo-place in the gloom, as if the dread dog of Acheron kept post upon
the hills.

A light tap woke me in the sunlight, and a lighter voice. Mr.
Rochester took breakfast with us in a gloomy old dressing-room, moody
and taciturn, unpacified by sleep. But Jane, whimsical and deft, had