"Well, whatever I am, remember you are my wife; we were married an

hour since, in the presence of all these witnesses." She giggled,

and her colour rose.

"Now, Dent," continued Mr. Rochester, "it is your turn." And as the

other party withdrew, he and his band took the vacated seats. Miss

Ingram placed herself at her leader's right hand; the other diviners

filled the chairs on each side of him and her. I did not now watch

the actors; I no longer waited with interest for the curtain to

rise; my attention was absorbed by the spectators; my eyes, erewhile

fixed on the arch, were now irresistibly attracted to the semicircle

of chairs. What charade Colonel Dent and his party played, what

word they chose, how they acquitted themselves, I no longer

remember; but I still see the consultation which followed each

scene: I see Mr. Rochester turn to Miss Ingram, and Miss Ingram to

him; I see her incline her head towards him, till the jetty curls

almost touch his shoulder and wave against his cheek; I hear their

mutual whisperings; I recall their interchanged glances; and

something even of the feeling roused by the spectacle returns in

memory at this moment.

I have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr. Rochester: I

could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased

to notice me--because I might pass hours in his presence, and he

would never once turn his eyes in my direction--because I saw all

his attentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me

with the hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and

imperious eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as

from an object too mean to merit observation. I could not unlove

him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady--because

I read daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting

her--because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship which,

if careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek, was yet,

in its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very pride,

irresistible.

There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances,

though much to create despair. Much too, you will think, reader, to

engender jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be

jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram's. But I was not jealous: or

very rarely;--the nature of the pain I suffered could not be

explained by that word. Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy:

she was too inferior to excite the feeling. Pardon the seeming

paradox; I mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not

genuine: she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her

mind was poor, her heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed

spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by

its freshness. She was not good; she was not original: she used to

repeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered, nor had, an

opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she

did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and

truth were not in her. Too often she betrayed this, by the undue

vent she gave to a spiteful antipathy she had conceived against

little Adele: pushing her away with some contumelious epithet if

she happened to approach her; sometimes ordering her from the room,

and always treating her with coldness and acrimony. Other eyes

besides mine watched these manifestations of character--watched them

closely, keenly, shrewdly. Yes; the future bridegroom, Mr.

Rochester himself, exercised over his intended a ceaseless

surveillance; and it was from this sagacity--this guardedness of

his--this perfect, clear consciousness of his fair one's defects--

this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments towards her, that

my ever-torturing pain arose.




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