prompt:
Chapter: The recollection of about three days and nights succeeding this is very
dim in my mind.  I can recall some sensations felt in that interval; but
few thoughts framed, and no actions performed.  I knew I was in a small
room and in a narrow bed.  To that bed I seemed to have grown; I lay on
it motionless as a stone; and to have torn me from it would have been
almost to kill me.  I took no note of the lapse of time--of the change
from morning to noon, from noon to evening.  I observed when any one
entered or left the apartment: I could even tell who they were; I could
understand what was said when the speaker stood near to me; but I could
not answer; to open my lips or move my limbs was equally impossible.
Hannah, the servant, was my most frequent visitor.  Her coming disturbed
me.  I had a feeling that she wished me away: that she did not understand
me or my circumstances; that she was prejudiced against me.  Diana and
Mary appeared in the chamber once or twice a day.  They would whisper
sentences of this sort at my bedside--

"It is very well we took her in."

"Yes; she would certainly have been found dead at the door in the morning
had she been left out all night.  I wonder what she has gone through?"

"Strange hardships, I imagine--poor, emaciated, pallid wanderer?"

"She is not an uneducated person, I should think, by her manner of
speaking; her accent was quite pure; and the clothes she took off, though
splashed and wet, were little worn and fine."

"She has a peculiar face; fleshless and haggard as it is, I rather like
it; and when in good health and animated, I can fancy her physiognomy
would be agreeable."

Never once in their dialogues did I hear a syllable of regret at the
hospitality they had extended to me, or of suspicion of, or aversion to,
myself.  I was comforted.

Mr. St. John came but once: he looked at me, and said my state of
lethargy was the result of reaction from excessive and protracted
fatigue.  He pronounced it needless to send for a doctor: nature, he was
sure, would manage best, left to herself.  He said every nerve had been
overstrained in some way, and the whole system must sleep torpid a while.
There was no disease.  He imagined my recovery would be rapid enough when
once commenced.  These opinions he delivered in a few words, in a quiet,
low voice; and added, after a pause, in the tone of a man little
accustomed to expansive comment, "Rather an unusual physiognomy;
certainly, not indicative of vulgarity or degradation."

"Far otherwise," responded Diana.  "To speak truth, St. John, my heart
rather warms to the poor little soul.  I wish we may be able to benefit
her permanently."

"That is hardly likely," was the reply.  "You will find she is some young
lady who has had a misunderstanding with her friends, and has probably
injudiciously left them.  We may, perhaps, succeed in restoring her to
them, if she is not obstinate: but I trace lines of force in her face
which make me sceptical of her tractability."  He stood considering me
some minutes; then added, "She looks sensible, but not at all handsome."

"She is so ill, St. John."

"Ill or well, she would always be plain.  The grace and harmony of beauty
are quite wanting in those features."

On the third day I was better; on the fourth, I could speak, move, rise
in bed, and turn.  Hannah had brought me some gruel and dry toast, about,
as I supposed, the dinner-hour.  I had eaten with relish: the food was
good--void of the feverish flavour which had hitherto poisoned what I had
swallowed.  When she left me, I felt comparatively strong and revived:
ere long satiety of repose and desire for action stirred me.  I wished to
rise; but what could I put on?  Only my damp and bemired apparel; in
which I had slept on the ground and fallen in the marsh.  I felt ashamed
to appear before my benefactors so clad.  I was spared the humiliation.

On a chair by the bedside were all my own things, clean and dry.  My
black silk frock hung against the wall.  The traces of the bog were
removed from it; the creases left by the wet smoothed out: it was quite
decent.  My very shoes and stockings were purified and rendered
presentable.  There were the means of washing in the room, and a comb and
brush to smooth my hair.  After a weary process, and resting every five
minutes, I succeeded in dressing myself.  My clothes hung loose on me;
for I was much wasted, but I covered deficiencies with a shawl, and once
more, clean and respectable looking--no speck of the dirt, no trace of
the disorder I so hated, and which seemed so to degrade me, left--I crept
down a stone staircase with the aid of the banisters, to a narrow low
passage, and found my way presently to the kitchen.

It was full of the fragrance of new bread and the warmth of a generous
fire.  Hannah was baking.  Prejudices, it is well known, are most
difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened
or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.
Hannah had been cold and stiff, indeed, at the first: latterly she had
begun to relent a little; and when she saw me come in tidy and
well-dressed, she even smiled.

"What, you have got up!" she said.  "You are better, then.  You may sit
you down in my chair on the hearthstone, if you will."

She pointed to the rocking-chair: I took it.  She bustled about,
examining me every now and then with the corner of her eye.  Turning to
me, as she took some loaves from the oven, she asked bluntly--

"Did you ever go a-begging afore you came here?"

I was indignant for a moment; but remembering that anger was out of the
question, and that I had indeed appeared as a beggar to her, I answered
quietly, but still not without a certain marked firmness--

"You are mistaken in supposing me a beggar.  I am no beggar; any more
than yourself or your young ladies."

After a pause she said, "I dunnut understand that: you've like no house,
nor no brass, I guess?"

"The want of house or brass (by which I suppose you mean money) does not
make a beggar in your sense of the word."

"Are you book-learned?" she inquired presently.

"Yes, very."

"But you've never been to a boarding-school?"

"I was at a boarding-school eight years."

She opened her eyes wide.  "Whatever cannot ye keep yourself for, then?"

"I have kept myself; and, I trust, shall keep myself again.  What are you
going to do with these gooseberries?" I inquired, as she brought out a
basket of the fruit.

"Mak' 'em into pies."

"Give them to me and I'll pick them."

"Nay; I dunnut want ye to do nought."

"But I must do something.  Let me have them."

She consented; and she even brought me a clean towel to spread over my
dress, "lest," as she said, "I should mucky it."

"Ye've not been used to sarvant's wark, I see by your hands," she
remarked.  "Happen ye've been a dressmaker?"

"No, you are wrong.  And now, never mind what I have been: don't trouble
your head further about me; but tell me the name of the house where we
are."

"Some calls it Marsh End, and some calls it Moor House."

"And the gentleman who lives here is called Mr. St. John?"

"Nay; he doesn't live here: he is only staying a while.  When he is at
home, he is in his own parish at Morton."

"That village a few miles off?

"Aye."

"And what is he?"

"He is a parson."

I remembered the answer of the old housekeeper at the parsonage, when I
had asked to see the clergyman.  "This, then, was his father's
residence?"

"Aye; old Mr. Rivers lived here, and his father, and grandfather, and
gurt (great) grandfather afore him."

"The name, then, of that gentleman, is Mr. St. John Rivers?"

"Aye; St. John is like his kirstened name."

"And his sisters are called Diana and Mary Rivers?"

"Yes."

"Their father is dead?"

"Dead three weeks sin' of a stroke."

"They have no mother?"

"The mistress has been dead this mony a year."

"Have you lived with the family long?"

"I've lived here thirty year.  I nursed them all three."

"That proves you must have been an honest and faithful servant.  I will
say so much for you, though you have had the incivility to call me a
beggar."

She again regarded me with a surprised stare.  "I believe," she said, "I
was quite mista'en in my thoughts of you: but there is so mony cheats
goes about, you mun forgie me."

"And though," I continued, rather severely, "you wished to turn me from
the door, on a night when you should not have shut out a dog."

"Well, it was hard: but what can a body do?  I thought more o' th'
childer nor of mysel: poor things!  They've like nobody to tak' care on
'em but me.  I'm like to look sharpish."

I maintained a grave silence for some minutes.

"You munnut think too hardly of me," she again remarked.

"But I do think hardly of you," I said; "and I'll tell you why--not so
much because you refused to give me shelter, or regarded me as an
impostor, as because you just now made it a species of reproach that I
had no 'brass' and no house.  Some of the best people that ever lived
have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought not
to consider poverty a crime."

"No more I ought," said she: "Mr. St. John tells me so too; and I see I
wor wrang--but I've clear a different notion on you now to what I had.
You look a raight down dacent little crater."

"That will do--I forgive you now.  Shake hands."

She put her floury and horny hand into mine; another and heartier smile
illumined her rough face, and from that moment we were friends.

Hannah was evidently fond of talking.  While I picked the fruit, and she
made the paste for the pies, she proceeded to give me sundry details
about her deceased master and mistress, and "the childer," as she called
the young people.

Old Mr. Rivers, she said, was a plain man enough, but a gentleman, and of
as ancient a family as could be found.  Marsh End had belonged to the
Rivers ever since it was a house: and it was, she affirmed, "aboon two
hundred year old--for all it looked but a small, humble place, naught to
compare wi' Mr. Oliver's grand hall down i' Morton Vale.  But she could
remember Bill Oliver's father a journeyman needlemaker; and th' Rivers
wor gentry i' th' owd days o' th' Henrys, as onybody might see by looking
into th' registers i' Morton Church vestry."  Still, she allowed, "the
owd maister was like other folk--naught mich out o' t' common way: stark
mad o' shooting, and farming, and sich like."  The mistress was
different.  She was a great reader, and studied a deal; and the "bairns"
had taken after her.  There was nothing like them in these parts, nor
ever had been; they had liked learning, all three, almost from the time
they could speak; and they had always been "of a mak' of their own."  Mr.
St. John, when he grew up, would go to college and be a parson; and the
girls, as soon as they left school, would seek places as governesses: for
they had told her their father had some years ago lost a great deal of
money by a man he had trusted turning bankrupt; and as he was now not
rich enough to give them fortunes, they must provide for themselves.  They
had lived very little at home for a long while, and were only come now to
stay a few weeks on account of their father's death; but they did so like
Marsh End and Morton, and all these moors and hills about.  They had been
in London, and many other grand towns; but they always said there was no
place like home; and then they were so agreeable with each other--never
fell out nor "threaped."  She did not know where there was such a family
for being united.

Having finished my task of gooseberry picking, I asked where the two
ladies and their brother were now.

"Gone over to Morton for a walk; but they would be back in half-an-hour
to tea."

They returned within the time Hannah had allotted them: they entered by
the kitchen door.  Mr. St. John, when he saw me, merely bowed and passed
through; the two ladies stopped: Mary, in a few words, kindly and calmly
expressed the pleasure she felt in seeing me well enough to be able to
come down; Diana took my hand: she shook her head at me.

"You should have waited for my leave to descend," she said.  "You still
look very pale--and so thin!  Poor child!--poor girl!"

Diana had a voice toned, to my ear, like the cooing of a dove.  She
possessed eyes whose gaze I delighted to encounter.  Her whole face
seemed to me full of charm.  Mary's countenance was equally
intelligent--her features equally pretty; but her expression was more
reserved, and her manners, though gentle, more distant.  Diana looked and
spoke with a certain authority: she had a will, evidently.  It was my
nature to feel pleasure in yielding to an authority supported like hers,
and to bend, where my conscience and self-respect permitted, to an active
will.

"And what business have you here?" she continued.  "It is not your place.
Mary and I sit in the kitchen sometimes, because at home we like to be
free, even to license--but you are a visitor, and must go into the
parlour."

"I am very well here."

"Not at all, with Hannah bustling about and covering you with flour."

"Besides, the fire is too hot for you," interposed Mary.

"To be sure," added her sister.  "Come, you must be obedient."  And still
holding my hand she made me rise, and led me into the inner room.

"Sit there," she said, placing me on the sofa, "while we take our things
off and get the tea ready; it is another privilege we exercise in our
little moorland home--to prepare our own meals when we are so inclined,
or when Hannah is baking, brewing, washing, or ironing."

She closed the door, leaving me solus with Mr. St. John, who sat
opposite, a book or newspaper in his hand.  I examined first, the
parlour, and then its occupant.

The parlour was rather a small room, very plainly furnished, yet
comfortable, because clean and neat.  The old-fashioned chairs were very
bright, and the walnut-wood table was like a looking-glass.  A few
strange, antique portraits of the men and women of other days decorated
the stained walls; a cupboard with glass doors contained some books and
an ancient set of china.  There was no superfluous ornament in the
room--not one modern piece of furniture, save a brace of workboxes and a
lady's desk in rosewood, which stood on a side-table:
everything--including the carpet and curtains--looked at once well worn
and well saved.

Mr. St. John--sitting as still as one of the dusty pictures on the walls,
keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused, and his lips mutely
sealed--was easy enough to examine.  Had he been a statue instead of a
man, he could not have been easier.  He was young--perhaps from twenty-
eight to thirty--tall, slender; his face riveted the eye; it was like a
Greek face, very pure in outline: quite a straight, classic nose; quite
an Athenian mouth and chin.  It is seldom, indeed, an English face comes
so near the antique models as did his.  He might well be a little shocked
at the irregularity of my lineaments, his own being so harmonious.  His
eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes; his high forehead,
colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks of
fair hair.

This is a gentle delineation, is it not, reader?  Yet he whom it
describes scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle, a yielding,
an impressible, or even of a placid nature.  Quiescent as he now sat,
there was something about his nostril, his mouth, his brow, which, to my
perceptions, indicated elements within either restless, or hard, or
eager.  He did not speak to me one word, nor even direct to me one
glance, till his sisters returned.  Diana, as she passed in and out, in
the course of preparing tea, brought me a little cake, baked on the top
of the oven.

"Eat that now," she said: "you must be hungry.  Hannah says you have had
nothing but some gruel since breakfast."

I did not refuse it, for my appetite was awakened and keen.  Mr. Rivers
now closed his book, approached the table, and, as he took a seat, fixed
his blue pictorial-looking eyes full on me.  There was an unceremonious
directness, a searching, decided steadfastness in his gaze now, which
told that intention, and not diffidence, had hitherto kept it averted
from the stranger.

"You are very hungry," he said.

"I am, sir."  It is my way--it always was my way, by instinct--ever to
meet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness.

"It is well for you that a low fever has forced you to abstain for the
last three days: there would have been danger in yielding to the cravings
of your appetite at first.  Now you may eat, though still not
immoderately."

"I trust I shall not eat long at your expense, sir," was my very clumsily-
contrived, unpolished answer.

"No," he said coolly: "when you have indicated to us the residence of
your friends, we can write to them, and you may be restored to home."

"That, I must plainly tell you, is out of my power to do; being
absolutely without home and friends."

The three looked at me, but not distrustfully; I felt there was no
suspicion in their glances: there was more of curiosity.  I speak
particularly of the young ladies.  St. John's eyes, though clear enough
in a literal sense, in a figurative one were difficult to fathom.  He
seemed to use them rather as instruments to search other people's
thoughts, than as agents to reveal his own: the which combination of
keenness and reserve was considerably more calculated to embarrass than
to encourage.

"Do you mean to say," he asked, "that you are completely isolated from
every connection?"

"I do.  Not a tie links me to any living thing: not a claim do I possess
to admittance under any roof in England."

"A most singular position at your age!"

Here I saw his glance directed to my hands, which were folded on the
table before me.  I wondered what he sought there: his words soon
explained the quest.

"You have never been married?  You are a spinster?"

Diana laughed.  "Why, she can't be above seventeen or eighteen years old,
St. John," said she.

"I am near nineteen: but I am not married.  No."

I felt a burning glow mount to my face; for bitter and agitating
recollections were awakened by the allusion to marriage.  They all saw
the embarrassment and the emotion.  Diana and Mary relieved me by turning
their eyes elsewhere than to my crimsoned visage; but the colder and
sterner brother continued to gaze, till the trouble he had excited forced
out tears as well as colour.

"Where did you last reside?" he now asked.

"You are too inquisitive, St. John," murmured Mary in a low voice; but he
leaned over the table and required an answer by a second firm and
piercing look.

"The name of the place where, and of the person with whom I lived, is my
secret," I replied concisely.

"Which, if you like, you have, in my opinion, a right to keep, both from
St. John and every other questioner," remarked Diana.

"Yet if I know nothing about you or your history, I cannot help you," he
said.  "And you need help, do you not?"

"I need it, and I seek it so far, sir, that some true philanthropist will
put me in the way of getting work which I can do, and the remuneration
for which will keep me, if but in the barest necessaries of life."

"I know not whether I am a true philanthropist; yet I am willing to aid
you to the utmost of my power in a purpose so honest.  First, then, tell
me what you have been accustomed to do, and what you _can_ do."

I had now swallowed my tea.  I was mightily refreshed by the beverage; as
much so as a giant with wine: it gave new tone to my unstrung nerves, and
enabled me to address this penetrating young judge steadily.

"Mr. Rivers," I said, turning to him, and looking at him, as he looked at
me, openly and without diffidence, "you and your sisters have done me a
great service--the greatest man can do his fellow-being; you have rescued
me, by your noble hospitality, from death.  This benefit conferred gives
you an unlimited claim on my gratitude, and a claim, to a certain extent,
on my confidence.  I will tell you as much of the history of the wanderer
you have harboured, as I can tell without compromising my own peace of
mind--my own security, moral and physical, and that of others.

"I am an orphan, the daughter of a clergyman.  My parents died before I
could know them.  I was brought up a dependant; educated in a charitable
institution.  I will even tell you the name of the establishment, where I
passed six years as a pupil, and two as a teacher--Lowood Orphan Asylum,
---shire: you will have heard of it, Mr. Rivers?--the Rev. Robert
Brocklehurst is the treasurer."

"I have heard of Mr. Brocklehurst, and I have seen the school."

"I left Lowood nearly a year since to become a private governess.  I
obtained a good situation, and was happy.  This place I was obliged to
leave four days before I came here.  The reason of my departure I cannot
and ought not to explain: it would be useless, dangerous, and would sound
incredible.  No blame attached to me: I am as free from culpability as
any one of you three.  Miserable I am, and must be for a time; for the
catastrophe which drove me from a house I had found a paradise was of a
strange and direful nature.  I observed but two points in planning my
departure--speed, secrecy: to secure these, I had to leave behind me
everything I possessed except a small parcel; which, in my hurry and
trouble of mind, I forgot to take out of the coach that brought me to
Whitcross.  To this neighbourhood, then, I came, quite destitute.  I
slept two nights in the open air, and wandered about two days without
crossing a threshold: but twice in that space of time did I taste food;
and it was when brought by hunger, exhaustion, and despair almost to the
last gasp, that you, Mr. Rivers, forbade me to perish of want at your
door, and took me under the shelter of your roof.  I know all your
sisters have done for me since--for I have not been insensible during my
seeming torpor--and I owe to their spontaneous, genuine, genial
compassion as large a debt as to your evangelical charity."

"Don't make her talk any more now, St. John," said Diana, as I paused;
"she is evidently not yet fit for excitement.  Come to the sofa and sit
down now, Miss Elliott."

I gave an involuntary half start at hearing the _alias_: I had forgotten
my new name.  Mr. Rivers, whom nothing seemed to escape, noticed it at
once.

"You said your name was Jane Elliott?" he observed.

"I did say so; and it is the name by which I think it expedient to be
called at present, but it is not my real name, and when I hear it, it
sounds strange to me."

"Your real name you will not give?"

"No: I fear discovery above all things; and whatever disclosure would
lead to it, I avoid."

"You are quite right, I am sure," said Diana.  "Now do, brother, let her
be at peace a while."

But when St. John had mused a few moments he recommenced as imperturbably
and with as much acumen as ever.

"You would not like to be long dependent on our hospitality--you would
wish, I see, to dispense as soon as may be with my sisters' compassion,
and, above all, with my _charity_ (I am quite sensible of the distinction
drawn, nor do I resent it--it is just): you desire to be independent of
us?"

"I do: I have already said so.  Show me how to work, or how to seek work:
that is all I now ask; then let me go, if it be but to the meanest
cottage; but till then, allow me to stay here: I dread another essay of
the horrors of homeless destitution."

"Indeed you _shall_ stay here," said Diana, putting her white hand on my
head.  "You _shall_," repeated Mary, in the tone of undemonstrative
sincerity which seemed natural to her.

"My sisters, you see, have a pleasure in keeping you," said Mr. St. John,
"as they would have a pleasure in keeping and cherishing a half-frozen
bird, some wintry wind might have driven through their casement.  I feel
more inclination to put you in the way of keeping yourself, and shall
endeavour to do so; but observe, my sphere is narrow.  I am but the
incumbent of a poor country parish: my aid must be of the humblest sort.
And if you are inclined to despise the day of small things, seek some
more efficient succour than such as I can offer."

"She has already said that she is willing to do anything honest she can
do," answered Diana for me; "and you know, St. John, she has no choice of
helpers: she is forced to put up with such crusty people as you."

"I will be a dressmaker; I will be a plain-workwoman; I will be a
servant, a nurse-girl, if I can be no better," I answered.

"Right," said Mr. St. John, quite coolly.  "If such is your spirit, I
promise to aid you, in my own time and way."

He now resumed the book with which he had been occupied before tea.  I
soon withdrew, for I had talked as much, and sat up as long, as my
present strength would permit.

The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked them.  In
a few days I had so far recovered my health that I could sit up all day,
and walk out sometimes.  I could join with Diana and Mary in all their
occupations; converse with them as much as they wished, and aid them when
and where they would allow me.  There was a reviving pleasure in this
intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me for the first time--the pleasure
arising from perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and principles.

I liked to read what they liked to read: what they enjoyed, delighted me;
what they approved, I reverenced.  They loved their sequestered home.  I,
too, in the grey, small, antique structure, with its low roof, its
latticed casements, its mouldering walls, its avenue of aged firs--all
grown aslant under the stress of mountain winds; its garden, dark with
yew and holly--and where no flowers but of the hardiest species would
bloom--found a charm both potent and permanent.  They clung to the purple
moors behind and around their dwelling--to the hollow vale into which the
pebbly bridle-path leading from their gate descended, and which wound
between fern-banks first, and then amongst a few of the wildest little
pasture-fields that ever bordered a wilderness of heath, or gave
sustenance to a flock of grey moorland sheep, with their little mossy-
faced lambs:--they clung to this scene, I say, with a perfect enthusiasm
of attachment.  I could comprehend the feeling, and share both its
strength and truth.  I saw the fascination of the locality.  I felt the
consecration of its loneliness: my eye feasted on the outline of swell
and sweep--on the wild colouring communicated to ridge and dell by moss,
by heath-bell, by flower-sprinkled turf, by brilliant bracken, and mellow
granite crag.  These details were just to me what they were to them--so
many pure and sweet sources of pleasure.  The strong blast and the soft
breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of sunrise and sunset;
the moonlight and the clouded night, developed for me, in these regions,
the same attraction as for them--wound round my faculties the same spell
that entranced theirs.

Indoors we agreed equally well.  They were both more accomplished and
better read than I was; but with eagerness I followed in the path of
knowledge they had trodden before me.  I devoured the books they lent me:
then it was full satisfaction to discuss with them in the evening what I
had perused during the day.  Thought fitted thought; opinion met opinion:
we coincided, in short, perfectly.

If in our trio there was a superior and a leader, it was Diana.
Physically, she far excelled me: she was handsome; she was vigorous.  In
her animal spirits there was an affluence of life and certainty of flow,
such as excited my wonder, while it baffled my comprehension.  I could
talk a while when the evening commenced, but the first gush of vivacity
and fluency gone, I was fain to sit on a stool at Diana's feet, to rest
my head on her knee, and listen alternately to her and Mary, while they
sounded thoroughly the topic on which I had but touched.  Diana offered
to teach me German.  I liked to learn of her: I saw the part of
instructress pleased and suited her; that of scholar pleased and suited
me no less.  Our natures dovetailed: mutual affection--of the strongest
kind--was the result.  They discovered I could draw: their pencils and
colour-boxes were immediately at my service.  My skill, greater in this
one point than theirs, surprised and charmed them.  Mary would sit and
watch me by the hour together: then she would take lessons; and a docile,
intelligent, assiduous pupil she made.  Thus occupied, and mutually
entertained, days passed like hours, and weeks like days.

As to Mr. St John, the intimacy which had arisen so naturally and rapidly
between me and his sisters did not extend to him.  One reason of the
distance yet observed between us was, that he was comparatively seldom at
home: a large proportion of his time appeared devoted to visiting the
sick and poor among the scattered population of his parish.

No weather seemed to hinder him in these pastoral excursions: rain or
fair, he would, when his hours of morning study were over, take his hat,
and, followed by his father's old pointer, Carlo, go out on his mission
of love or duty--I scarcely know in which light he regarded it.
Sometimes, when the day was very unfavourable, his sisters would
expostulate.  He would then say, with a peculiar smile, more solemn than
cheerful--

"And if I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside from
these easy tasks, what preparation would such sloth be for the future I
propose to myself?"

Diana and Mary's general answer to this question was a sigh, and some
minutes of apparently mournful meditation.

But besides his frequent absences, there was another barrier to
friendship with him: he seemed of a reserved, an abstracted, and even of
a brooding nature.  Zealous in his ministerial labours, blameless in his
life and habits, he yet did not appear to enjoy that mental serenity,
that inward content, which should be the reward of every sincere
Christian and practical philanthropist.  Often, of an evening, when he
sat at the window, his desk and papers before him, he would cease reading
or writing, rest his chin on his hand, and deliver himself up to I know
not what course of thought; but that it was perturbed and exciting might
be seen in the frequent flash and changeful dilation of his eye.

I think, moreover, that Nature was not to him that treasury of delight it
was to his sisters.  He expressed once, and but once in my hearing, a
strong sense of the rugged charm of the hills, and an inborn affection
for the dark roof and hoary walls he called his home; but there was more
of gloom than pleasure in the tone and words in which the sentiment was
manifested; and never did he seem to roam the moors for the sake of their
soothing silence--never seek out or dwell upon the thousand peaceful
delights they could yield.

Incommunicative as he was, some time elapsed before I had an opportunity
of gauging his mind.  I first got an idea of its calibre when I heard him
preach in his own church at Morton.  I wish I could describe that sermon:
but it is past my power.  I cannot even render faithfully the effect it
produced on me.

It began calm--and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice went, it
was calm to the end: an earnestly felt, yet strictly restrained zeal
breathed soon in the distinct accents, and prompted the nervous language.
This grew to force--compressed, condensed, controlled.  The heart was
thrilled, the mind astonished, by the power of the preacher: neither were
softened.  Throughout there was a strange bitterness; an absence of
consolatory gentleness; stern allusions to Calvinistic
doctrines--election, predestination, reprobation--were frequent; and each
reference to these points sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom.
When he had done, instead of feeling better, calmer, more enlightened by
his discourse, I experienced an inexpressible sadness; for it seemed to
me--I know not whether equally so to others--that the eloquence to which
I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid dregs of
disappointment--where moved troubling impulses of insatiate yearnings and
disquieting aspirations.  I was sure St. John Rivers--pure-lived,
conscientious, zealous as he was--had not yet found that peace of God
which passeth all understanding: he had no more found it, I thought, than
had I with my concealed and racking regrets for my broken idol and lost
elysium--regrets to which I have latterly avoided referring, but which
possessed me and tyrannised over me ruthlessly.

Meantime a month was gone.  Diana and Mary were soon to leave Moor House,
and return to the far different life and scene which awaited them, as
governesses in a large, fashionable, south-of-England city, where each
held a situation in families by whose wealthy and haughty members they
were regarded only as humble dependants, and who neither knew nor sought
out their innate excellences, and appreciated only their acquired
accomplishments as they appreciated the skill of their cook or the taste
of their waiting-woman.  Mr. St. John had said nothing to me yet about
the employment he had promised to obtain for me; yet it became urgent
that I should have a vocation of some kind.  One morning, being left
alone with him a few minutes in the parlour, I ventured to approach the
window-recess--which his table, chair, and desk consecrated as a kind of
study--and I was going to speak, though not very well knowing in what
words to frame my inquiry--for it is at all times difficult to break the
ice of reserve glassing over such natures as his--when he saved me the
trouble by being the first to commence a dialogue.

Looking up as I drew near--"You have a question to ask of me?" he said.

"Yes; I wish to know whether you have heard of any service I can offer
myself to undertake?"

"I found or devised something for you three weeks ago; but as you seemed
both useful and happy here--as my sisters had evidently become attached
to you, and your society gave them unusual pleasure--I deemed it
inexpedient to break in on your mutual comfort till their approaching
departure from Marsh End should render yours necessary."

"And they will go in three days now?" I said.

"Yes; and when they go, I shall return to the parsonage at Morton: Hannah
will accompany me; and this old house will be shut up."

I waited a few moments, expecting he would go on with the subject first
broached: but he seemed to have entered another train of reflection: his
look denoted abstraction from me and my business.  I was obliged to
recall him to a theme which was of necessity one of close and anxious
interest to me.

"What is the employment you had in view, Mr. Rivers?  I hope this delay
will not have increased the difficulty of securing it."

"Oh, no; since it is an employment which depends only on me to give, and
you to accept."

He again paused: there seemed a reluctance to continue.  I grew
impatient: a restless movement or two, and an eager and exacting glance
fastened on his face, conveyed the feeling to him as effectually as words
could have done, and with less trouble.

"You need be in no hurry to hear," he said: "let me frankly tell you, I
have nothing eligible or profitable to suggest.  Before I explain,
recall, if you please, my notice, clearly given, that if I helped you, it
must be as the blind man would help the lame.  I am poor; for I find
that, when I have paid my father's debts, all the patrimony remaining to
me will be this crumbling grange, the row of scathed firs behind, and the
patch of moorish soil, with the yew-trees and holly-bushes in front.  I
am obscure: Rivers is an old name; but of the three sole descendants of
the race, two earn the dependant's crust among strangers, and the third
considers himself an alien from his native country--not only for life,
but in death.  Yes, and deems, and is bound to deem, himself honoured by
the lot, and aspires but after the day when the cross of separation from
fleshly ties shall be laid on his shoulders, and when the Head of that
church-militant of whose humblest members he is one, shall give the word,
'Rise, follow Me!'"

St. John said these words as he pronounced his sermons, with a quiet,
deep voice; with an unflushed cheek, and a coruscating radiance of
glance.  He resumed--

"And since I am myself poor and obscure, I can offer you but a service of
poverty and obscurity.  _You_ may even think it degrading--for I see now
your habits have been what the world calls refined: your tastes lean to
the ideal, and your society has at least been amongst the educated; but
_I_ consider that no service degrades which can better our race.  I hold
that the more arid and unreclaimed the soil where the Christian
labourer's task of tillage is appointed him--the scantier the meed his
toil brings--the higher the honour.  His, under such circumstances, is
the destiny of the pioneer; and the first pioneers of the Gospel were the
Apostles--their captain was Jesus, the Redeemer, Himself."

"Well?" I said, as he again paused--"proceed."

He looked at me before he proceeded: indeed, he seemed leisurely to read
my face, as if its features and lines were characters on a page.  The
conclusions drawn from this scrutiny he partially expressed in his
succeeding observations.

"I believe you will accept the post I offer you," said he, "and hold it
for a while: not permanently, though: any more than I could permanently
keep the narrow and narrowing--the tranquil, hidden office of English
country incumbent; for in your nature is an alloy as detrimental to
repose as that in mine, though of a different kind."

"Do explain," I urged, when he halted once more.

"I will; and you shall hear how poor the proposal is,--how trivial--how
cramping.  I shall not stay long at Morton, now that my father is dead,
and that I am my own master.  I shall leave the place probably in the
course of a twelve-month; but while I do stay, I will exert myself to the
utmost for its improvement.  Morton, when I came to it two years ago, had
no school: the children of the poor were excluded from every hope of
progress.  I established one for boys: I mean now to open a second school
for girls.  I have hired a building for the purpose, with a cottage of
two rooms attached to it for the mistress's house.  Her salary will be
thirty pounds a year: her house is already furnished, very simply, but
sufficiently, by the kindness of a lady, Miss Oliver; the only daughter
of the sole rich man in my parish--Mr. Oliver, the proprietor of a needle-
factory and iron-foundry in the valley.  The same lady pays for the
education and clothing of an orphan from the workhouse, on condition that
she shall aid the mistress in such menial offices connected with her own
house and the school as her occupation of teaching will prevent her
having time to discharge in person.  Will you be this mistress?"

He put the question rather hurriedly; he seemed half to expect an
indignant, or at least a disdainful rejection of the offer: not knowing
all my thoughts and feelings, though guessing some, he could not tell in
what light the lot would appear to me.  In truth it was humble--but then
it was sheltered, and I wanted a safe asylum: it was plodding--but then,
compared with that of a governess in a rich house, it was independent;
and the fear of servitude with strangers entered my soul like iron: it
was not ignoble--not unworthy--not mentally degrading, I made my
decision.

"I thank you for the proposal, Mr. Rivers, and I accept it with all my
heart."

"But you comprehend me?" he said.  "It is a village school: your scholars
will be only poor girls--cottagers' children--at the best, farmers'
daughters.  Knitting, sewing, reading, writing, ciphering, will be all
you will have to teach.  What will you do with your accomplishments?
What, with the largest portion of your mind--sentiments--tastes?"

"Save them till they are wanted.  They will keep."

"You know what you undertake, then?"

"I do."

He now smiled: and not a bitter or a sad smile, but one well pleased and
deeply gratified.

"And when will you commence the exercise of your function?"

"I will go to my house to-morrow, and open the school, if you like, next
week."

"Very well: so be it."

He rose and walked through the room.  Standing still, he again looked at
me.  He shook his head.

"What do you disapprove of, Mr. Rivers?" I asked.

"You will not stay at Morton long: no, no!"

"Why?  What is your reason for saying so?"

"I read it in your eye; it is not of that description which promises the
maintenance of an even tenor in life."

"I am not ambitious."

He started at the word "ambitious."  He repeated, "No.  What made you
think of ambition?  Who is ambitious?  I know I am: but how did you find
it out?"

"I was speaking of myself."

"Well, if you are not ambitious, you are--"  He paused.

"What?"

"I was going to say, impassioned: but perhaps you would have
misunderstood the word, and been displeased.  I mean, that human
affections and sympathies have a most powerful hold on you.  I am sure
you cannot long be content to pass your leisure in solitude, and to
devote your working hours to a monotonous labour wholly void of stimulus:
any more than I can be content," he added, with emphasis, "to live here
buried in morass, pent in with mountains--my nature, that God gave me,
contravened; my faculties, heaven-bestowed, paralysed--made useless.  You
hear now how I contradict myself.  I, who preached contentment with a
humble lot, and justified the vocation even of hewers of wood and drawers
of water in God's service--I, His ordained minister, almost rave in my
restlessness.  Well, propensities and principles must be reconciled by
some means."

He left the room.  In this brief hour I had learnt more of him than in
the whole previous month: yet still he puzzled me.

Diana and Mary Rivers became more sad and silent as the day approached
for leaving their brother and their home.  They both tried to appear as
usual; but the sorrow they had to struggle against was one that could not
be entirely conquered or concealed.  Diana intimated that this would be a
different parting from any they had ever yet known.  It would probably,
as far as St. John was concerned, be a parting for years: it might be a
parting for life.

"He will sacrifice all to his long-framed resolves," she said: "natural
affection and feelings more potent still.  St. John looks quiet, Jane;
but he hides a fever in his vitals.  You would think him gentle, yet in
some things he is inexorable as death; and the worst of it is, my
conscience will hardly permit me to dissuade him from his severe
decision: certainly, I cannot for a moment blame him for it.  It is
right, noble, Christian: yet it breaks my heart!"  And the tears gushed
to her fine eyes.  Mary bent her head low over her work.

"We are now without father: we shall soon be without home and brother,"
she murmured.

At that moment a little accident supervened, which seemed decreed by fate
purposely to prove the truth of the adage, that "misfortunes never come
singly," and to add to their distresses the vexing one of the slip
between the cup and the lip.  St. John passed the window reading a
letter.  He entered.

"Our uncle John is dead," said he.

Both the sisters seemed struck: not shocked or appalled; the tidings
appeared in their eyes rather momentous than afflicting.

"Dead?" repeated Diana.

"Yes."

She riveted a searching gaze on her brother's face.  "And what then?" she
demanded, in a low voice.

"What then, Die?" he replied, maintaining a marble immobility of feature.
"What then?  Why--nothing.  Read."

He threw the letter into her lap.  She glanced over it, and handed it to
Mary.  Mary perused it in silence, and returned it to her brother.  All
three looked at each other, and all three smiled--a dreary, pensive smile
enough.

"Amen!  We can yet live," said Diana at last.

"At any rate, it makes us no worse off than we were before," remarked
Mary.

"Only it forces rather strongly on the mind the picture of what _might
have been_," said Mr. Rivers, "and contrasts it somewhat too vividly with
what _is_."

He folded the letter, locked it in his desk, and again went out.

For some minutes no one spoke.  Diana then turned to me.

"Jane, you will wonder at us and our mysteries," she said, "and think us
hard-hearted beings not to be more moved at the death of so near a
relation as an uncle; but we have never seen him or known him.  He was my
mother's brother.  My father and he quarrelled long ago.  It was by his
advice that my father risked most of his property in the speculation that
ruined him.  Mutual recrimination passed between them: they parted in
anger, and were never reconciled.  My uncle engaged afterwards in more
prosperous undertakings: it appears he realised a fortune of twenty
thousand pounds.  He was never married, and had no near kindred but
ourselves and one other person, not more closely related than we.  My
father always cherished the idea that he would atone for his error by
leaving his possessions to us; that letter informs us that he has
bequeathed every penny to the other relation, with the exception of
thirty guineas, to be divided between St. John, Diana, and Mary Rivers,
for the purchase of three mourning rings.  He had a right, of course, to
do as he pleased: and yet a momentary damp is cast on the spirits by the
receipt of such news.  Mary and I would have esteemed ourselves rich with
a thousand pounds each; and to St. John such a sum would have been
valuable, for the good it would have enabled him to do."

This explanation given, the subject was dropped, and no further reference
made to it by either Mr. Rivers or his sisters.  The next day I left
Marsh End for Morton.  The day after, Diana and Mary quitted it for
distant B-.  In a week, Mr. Rivers and Hannah repaired to the parsonage:
and so the old grange was abandoned.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: It takes Jane a few days to recover and regain her strength. She is made at home in the Rivers household, and St. John soon discovers that she is an educated person. Not wishing to reveal her past, Jane calls herself 'Jane Elliott'. St. John is a parson and very handsome, but he is on a mission to do God's work and he hopes eventually to travel to India in order to be a servant of God and a Missionary. The Rivers are mourning the loss of their father, who died of a stroke three weeks ago. After a while, Jane advises her benefactors that she would like to obtain employment and St. John says that he will make enquiries for her. She soon becomes very close to the sisters, Mary and Diana. They are both well educated, and Diana teaches German to Jane while Jane gives Mary art instruction. Soon Diana and Mary prepare to travel down south in order to return to their jobs as Governesses. St. John plans to open a school at Morton Village for local girls, and would like Jane to be its Mistress at a rate of '30 per year. She agrees. She will have her own furnished cottage adjacent to the school. More sadness afflicts the Rivers family when they receive a letter that their Uncle John has died. They have been disinherited from their Uncle's estate due to a family quarrel. There is only one other relative who stands to inherit a fortune of '20,000.


prompt:
Chapter: My home, then, when I at last find a home,--is a cottage; a little room
with whitewashed walls and a sanded floor, containing four painted chairs
and a table, a clock, a cupboard, with two or three plates and dishes,
and a set of tea-things in delf.  Above, a chamber of the same dimensions
as the kitchen, with a deal bedstead and chest of drawers; small, yet too
large to be filled with my scanty wardrobe: though the kindness of my
gentle and generous friends has increased that, by a modest stock of such
things as are necessary.

It is evening.  I have dismissed, with the fee of an orange, the little
orphan who serves me as a handmaid.  I am sitting alone on the hearth.
This morning, the village school opened.  I had twenty scholars.  But
three of the number can read: none write or cipher.  Several knit, and a
few sew a little.  They speak with the broadest accent of the district.
At present, they and I have a difficulty in understanding each other's
language.  Some of them are unmannered, rough, intractable, as well as
ignorant; but others are docile, have a wish to learn, and evince a
disposition that pleases me.  I must not forget that these coarsely-clad
little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest
genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement,
intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in
those of the best-born.  My duty will be to develop these germs: surely I
shall find some happiness in discharging that office.  Much enjoyment I
do not expect in the life opening before me: yet it will, doubtless, if I
regulate my mind, and exert my powers as I ought, yield me enough to live
on from day to day.

Was I very gleeful, settled, content, during the hours I passed in yonder
bare, humble schoolroom this morning and afternoon?  Not to deceive
myself, I must reply--No: I felt desolate to a degree.  I felt--yes,
idiot that I am--I felt degraded.  I doubted I had taken a step which
sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence.  I was
weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of all I
heard and saw round me.  But let me not hate and despise myself too much
for these feelings; I know them to be wrong--that is a great step gained;
I shall strive to overcome them.  To-morrow, I trust, I shall get the
better of them partially; and in a few weeks, perhaps, they will be quite
subdued.  In a few months, it is possible, the happiness of seeing
progress, and a change for the better in my scholars may substitute
gratification for disgust.

Meantime, let me ask myself one question--Which is better?--To have
surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort--no
struggle;--but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on
the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the
luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr.
Rochester's mistress; delirious with his love half my time--for he
would--oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while.  He _did_ love
me--no one will ever love me so again.  I shall never more know the sweet
homage given to beauty, youth, and grace--for never to any one else shall
I seem to possess these charms.  He was fond and proud of me--it is what
no man besides will ever be.--But where am I wandering, and what am I
saying, and above all, feeling?  Whether is it better, I ask, to be a
slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles--fevered with delusive bliss one
hour--suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the
next--or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy
mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?

Yes; I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law, and
scorned and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment.  God
directed me to a correct choice: I thank His providence for the guidance!

Having brought my eventide musings to this point, I rose, went to my
door, and looked at the sunset of the harvest-day, and at the quiet
fields before my cottage, which, with the school, was distant half a mile
from the village.  The birds were singing their last strains--

   "The air was mild, the dew was balm."

While I looked, I thought myself happy, and was surprised to find myself
ere long weeping--and why?  For the doom which had reft me from adhesion
to my master: for him I was no more to see; for the desperate grief and
fatal fury--consequences of my departure--which might now, perhaps, be
dragging him from the path of right, too far to leave hope of ultimate
restoration thither.  At this thought, I turned my face aside from the
lovely sky of eve and lonely vale of Morton--I say _lonely_, for in that
bend of it visible to me there was no building apparent save the church
and the parsonage, half-hid in trees, and, quite at the extremity, the
roof of Vale Hall, where the rich Mr. Oliver and his daughter lived.  I
hid my eyes, and leant my head against the stone frame of my door; but
soon a slight noise near the wicket which shut in my tiny garden from the
meadow beyond it made me look up.  A dog--old Carlo, Mr. Rivers' pointer,
as I saw in a moment--was pushing the gate with his nose, and St. John
himself leant upon it with folded arms; his brow knit, his gaze, grave
almost to displeasure, fixed on me.  I asked him to come in.

"No, I cannot stay; I have only brought you a little parcel my sisters
left for you.  I think it contains a colour-box, pencils, and paper."

I approached to take it: a welcome gift it was.  He examined my face, I
thought, with austerity, as I came near: the traces of tears were
doubtless very visible upon it.

"Have you found your first day's work harder than you expected?" he
asked.

"Oh, no!  On the contrary, I think in time I shall get on with my
scholars very well."

"But perhaps your accommodations--your cottage--your furniture--have
disappointed your expectations?  They are, in truth, scanty enough; but--"
I interrupted--

"My cottage is clean and weather-proof; my furniture sufficient and
commodious.  All I see has made me thankful, not despondent.  I am not
absolutely such a fool and sensualist as to regret the absence of a
carpet, a sofa, and silver plate; besides, five weeks ago I had nothing--I
was an outcast, a beggar, a vagrant; now I have acquaintance, a home, a
business.  I wonder at the goodness of God; the generosity of my friends;
the bounty of my lot.  I do not repine."

"But you feel solitude an oppression?  The little house there behind you
is dark and empty."

"I have hardly had time yet to enjoy a sense of tranquillity, much less
to grow impatient under one of loneliness."

"Very well; I hope you feel the content you express: at any rate, your
good sense will tell you that it is too soon yet to yield to the
vacillating fears of Lot's wife.  What you had left before I saw you, of
course I do not know; but I counsel you to resist firmly every temptation
which would incline you to look back: pursue your present career
steadily, for some months at least."

"It is what I mean to do," I answered.  St. John continued--

"It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the bent
of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience.  God has
given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate; and when our
energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get--when our will
strains after a path we may not follow--we need neither starve from
inanition, nor stand still in despair: we have but to seek another
nourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden food it longed to
taste--and perhaps purer; and to hew out for the adventurous foot a road
as direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up against us, if
rougher than it.

"A year ago I was myself intensely miserable, because I thought I had
made a mistake in entering the ministry: its uniform duties wearied me to
death.  I burnt for the more active life of the world--for the more
exciting toils of a literary career--for the destiny of an artist,
author, orator; anything rather than that of a priest: yes, the heart of
a politician, of a soldier, of a votary of glory, a lover of renown, a
luster after power, beat under my curate's surplice.  I considered; my
life was so wretched, it must be changed, or I must die.  After a season
of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell: my cramped
existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds--my powers
heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread
their wings, and mount beyond ken.  God had an errand for me; to bear
which afar, to deliver it well, skill and strength, courage and
eloquence, the best qualifications of soldier, statesman, and orator,
were all needed: for these all centre in the good missionary.

"A missionary I resolved to be.  From that moment my state of mind
changed; the fetters dissolved and dropped from every faculty, leaving
nothing of bondage but its galling soreness--which time only can heal.  My
father, indeed, imposed the determination, but since his death, I have
not a legitimate obstacle to contend with; some affairs settled, a
successor for Morton provided, an entanglement or two of the feelings
broken through or cut asunder--a last conflict with human weakness, in
which I know I shall overcome, because I have vowed that I _will_
overcome--and I leave Europe for the East."

He said this, in his peculiar, subdued, yet emphatic voice; looking, when
he had ceased speaking, not at me, but at the setting sun, at which I
looked too.  Both he and I had our backs towards the path leading up the
field to the wicket.  We had heard no step on that grass-grown track; the
water running in the vale was the one lulling sound of the hour and
scene; we might well then start when a gay voice, sweet as a silver bell,
exclaimed--

"Good evening, Mr. Rivers.  And good evening, old Carlo.  Your dog is
quicker to recognise his friends than you are, sir; he pricked his ears
and wagged his tail when I was at the bottom of the field, and you have
your back towards me now."

It was true.  Though Mr. Rivers had started at the first of those musical
accents, as if a thunderbolt had split a cloud over his head, he stood
yet, at the close of the sentence, in the same attitude in which the
speaker had surprised him--his arm resting on the gate, his face directed
towards the west.  He turned at last, with measured deliberation.  A
vision, as it seemed to me, had risen at his side.  There appeared,
within three feet of him, a form clad in pure white--a youthful, graceful
form: full, yet fine in contour; and when, after bending to caress Carlo,
it lifted up its head, and threw back a long veil, there bloomed under
his glance a face of perfect beauty.  Perfect beauty is a strong
expression; but I do not retrace or qualify it: as sweet features as ever
the temperate clime of Albion moulded; as pure hues of rose and lily as
ever her humid gales and vapoury skies generated and screened, justified,
in this instance, the term.  No charm was wanting, no defect was
perceptible; the young girl had regular and delicate lineaments; eyes
shaped and coloured as we see them in lovely pictures, large, and dark,
and full; the long and shadowy eyelash which encircles a fine eye with so
soft a fascination; the pencilled brow which gives such clearness; the
white smooth forehead, which adds such repose to the livelier beauties of
tint and ray; the cheek oval, fresh, and smooth; the lips, fresh too,
ruddy, healthy, sweetly formed; the even and gleaming teeth without flaw;
the small dimpled chin; the ornament of rich, plenteous tresses--all
advantages, in short, which, combined, realise the ideal of beauty, were
fully hers.  I wondered, as I looked at this fair creature: I admired her
with my whole heart.  Nature had surely formed her in a partial mood;
and, forgetting her usual stinted step-mother dole of gifts, had endowed
this, her darling, with a grand-dame's bounty.

What did St. John Rivers think of this earthly angel?  I naturally asked
myself that question as I saw him turn to her and look at her; and, as
naturally, I sought the answer to the inquiry in his countenance.  He had
already withdrawn his eye from the Peri, and was looking at a humble tuft
of daisies which grew by the wicket.

"A lovely evening, but late for you to be out alone," he said, as he
crushed the snowy heads of the closed flowers with his foot.

"Oh, I only came home from S-" (she mentioned the name of a large town
some twenty miles distant) "this afternoon.  Papa told me you had opened
your school, and that the new mistress was come; and so I put on my
bonnet after tea, and ran up the valley to see her: this is she?"
pointing to me.

"It is," said St. John.

"Do you think you shall like Morton?" she asked of me, with a direct and
naive simplicity of tone and manner, pleasing, if child-like.

"I hope I shall.  I have many inducements to do so."

"Did you find your scholars as attentive as you expected?"

"Quite."

"Do you like your house?"

"Very much."

"Have I furnished it nicely?"

"Very nicely, indeed."

"And made a good choice of an attendant for you in Alice Wood?"

"You have indeed.  She is teachable and handy."  (This then, I thought,
is Miss Oliver, the heiress; favoured, it seems, in the gifts of fortune,
as well as in those of nature!  What happy combination of the planets
presided over her birth, I wonder?)

"I shall come up and help you to teach sometimes," she added.  "It will
be a change for me to visit you now and then; and I like a change.  Mr.
Rivers, I have been _so_ gay during my stay at S-.  Last night, or rather
this morning, I was dancing till two o'clock.  The ---th regiment are
stationed there since the riots; and the officers are the most agreeable
men in the world: they put all our young knife-grinders and scissor
merchants to shame."

It seemed to me that Mr. St. John's under lip protruded, and his upper
lip curled a moment.  His mouth certainly looked a good deal compressed,
and the lower part of his face unusually stern and square, as the
laughing girl gave him this information.  He lifted his gaze, too, from
the daisies, and turned it on her.  An unsmiling, a searching, a meaning
gaze it was.  She answered it with a second laugh, and laughter well
became her youth, her roses, her dimples, her bright eyes.

As he stood, mute and grave, she again fell to caressing Carlo.  "Poor
Carlo loves me," said she.  "_He_ is not stern and distant to his
friends; and if he could speak, he would not be silent."

As she patted the dog's head, bending with native grace before his young
and austere master, I saw a glow rise to that master's face.  I saw his
solemn eye melt with sudden fire, and flicker with resistless emotion.
Flushed and kindled thus, he looked nearly as beautiful for a man as she
for a woman.  His chest heaved once, as if his large heart, weary of
despotic constriction, had expanded, despite the will, and made a
vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty.  But he curbed it, I think,
as a resolute rider would curb a rearing steed.  He responded neither by
word nor movement to the gentle advances made him.

"Papa says you never come to see us now," continued Miss Oliver, looking
up.  "You are quite a stranger at Vale Hall.  He is alone this evening,
and not very well: will you return with me and visit him?"

"It is not a seasonable hour to intrude on Mr. Oliver," answered St.
John.

"Not a seasonable hour!  But I declare it is.  It is just the hour when
papa most wants company: when the works are closed and he has no business
to occupy him.  Now, Mr. Rivers, _do_ come.  Why are you so very shy, and
so very sombre?"  She filled up the hiatus his silence left by a reply of
her own.

"I forgot!" she exclaimed, shaking her beautiful curled head, as if
shocked at herself.  "I am so giddy and thoughtless!  _Do_ excuse me.  It
had slipped my memory that you have good reasons to be indisposed for
joining in my chatter.  Diana and Mary have left you, and Moor House is
shut up, and you are so lonely.  I am sure I pity you.  Do come and see
papa."

"Not to-night, Miss Rosamond, not to-night."

Mr. St. John spoke almost like an automaton: himself only knew the effort
it cost him thus to refuse.

"Well, if you are so obstinate, I will leave you; for I dare not stay any
longer: the dew begins to fall.  Good evening!"

She held out her hand.  He just touched it.  "Good evening!" he repeated,
in a voice low and hollow as an echo.  She turned, but in a moment
returned.

"Are you well?" she asked.  Well might she put the question: his face was
blanched as her gown.

"Quite well," he enunciated; and, with a bow, he left the gate.  She went
one way; he another.  She turned twice to gaze after him as she tripped
fairy-like down the field; he, as he strode firmly across, never turned
at all.

This spectacle of another's suffering and sacrifice rapt my thoughts from
exclusive meditation on my own.  Diana Rivers had designated her brother
"inexorable as death."  She had not exaggerated.

I continued the labours of the village-school as actively and faithfully
as I could.  It was truly hard work at first.  Some time elapsed before,
with all my efforts, I could comprehend my scholars and their nature.
Wholly untaught, with faculties quite torpid, they seemed to me
hopelessly dull; and, at first sight, all dull alike: but I soon found I
was mistaken.  There was a difference amongst them as amongst the
educated; and when I got to know them, and they me, this difference
rapidly developed itself.  Their amazement at me, my language, my rules,
and ways, once subsided, I found some of these heavy-looking, gaping
rustics wake up into sharp-witted girls enough.  Many showed themselves
obliging, and amiable too; and I discovered amongst them not a few
examples of natural politeness, and innate self-respect, as well as of
excellent capacity, that won both my goodwill and my admiration.  These
soon took a pleasure in doing their work well, in keeping their persons
neat, in learning their tasks regularly, in acquiring quiet and orderly
manners.  The rapidity of their progress, in some instances, was even
surprising; and an honest and happy pride I took in it: besides, I began
personally to like some of the best girls; and they liked me.  I had
amongst my scholars several farmers' daughters: young women grown,
almost.  These could already read, write, and sew; and to them I taught
the elements of grammar, geography, history, and the finer kinds of
needlework.  I found estimable characters amongst them--characters
desirous of information and disposed for improvement--with whom I passed
many a pleasant evening hour in their own homes.  Their parents then (the
farmer and his wife) loaded me with attentions.  There was an enjoyment
in accepting their simple kindness, and in repaying it by a
consideration--a scrupulous regard to their feelings--to which they were
not, perhaps, at all times accustomed, and which both charmed and
benefited them; because, while it elevated them in their own eyes, it
made them emulous to merit the deferential treatment they received.

I felt I became a favourite in the neighbourhood.  Whenever I went out, I
heard on all sides cordial salutations, and was welcomed with friendly
smiles.  To live amidst general regard, though it be but the regard of
working people, is like "sitting in sunshine, calm and sweet;" serene
inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray.  At this period of my life,
my heart far oftener swelled with thankfulness than sank with dejection:
and yet, reader, to tell you all, in the midst of this calm, this useful
existence--after a day passed in honourable exertion amongst my scholars,
an evening spent in drawing or reading contentedly alone--I used to rush
into strange dreams at night: dreams many-coloured, agitated, full of the
ideal, the stirring, the stormy--dreams where, amidst unusual scenes,
charged with adventure, with agitating risk and romantic chance, I still
again and again met Mr. Rochester, always at some exciting crisis; and
then the sense of being in his arms, hearing his voice, meeting his eye,
touching his hand and cheek, loving him, being loved by him--the hope of
passing a lifetime at his side, would be renewed, with all its first
force and fire.  Then I awoke.  Then I recalled where I was, and how
situated.  Then I rose up on my curtainless bed, trembling and quivering;
and then the still, dark night witnessed the convulsion of despair, and
heard the burst of passion.  By nine o'clock the next morning I was
punctually opening the school; tranquil, settled, prepared for the steady
duties of the day.

Rosamond Oliver kept her word in coming to visit me.  Her call at the
school was generally made in the course of her morning ride.  She would
canter up to the door on her pony, followed by a mounted livery servant.
Anything more exquisite than her appearance, in her purple habit, with
her Amazon's cap of black velvet placed gracefully above the long curls
that kissed her cheek and floated to her shoulders, can scarcely be
imagined: and it was thus she would enter the rustic building, and glide
through the dazzled ranks of the village children.  She generally came at
the hour when Mr. Rivers was engaged in giving his daily catechising
lesson.  Keenly, I fear, did the eye of the visitress pierce the young
pastor's heart.  A sort of instinct seemed to warn him of her entrance,
even when he did not see it; and when he was looking quite away from the
door, if she appeared at it, his cheek would glow, and his marble-seeming
features, though they refused to relax, changed indescribably, and in
their very quiescence became expressive of a repressed fervour, stronger
than working muscle or darting glance could indicate.

Of course, she knew her power: indeed, he did not, because he could not,
conceal it from her.  In spite of his Christian stoicism, when she went
up and addressed him, and smiled gaily, encouragingly, even fondly in his
face, his hand would tremble and his eye burn.  He seemed to say, with
his sad and resolute look, if he did not say it with his lips, "I love
you, and I know you prefer me.  It is not despair of success that keeps
me dumb.  If I offered my heart, I believe you would accept it.  But that
heart is already laid on a sacred altar: the fire is arranged round it.
It will soon be no more than a sacrifice consumed."

And then she would pout like a disappointed child; a pensive cloud would
soften her radiant vivacity; she would withdraw her hand hastily from
his, and turn in transient petulance from his aspect, at once so heroic
and so martyr-like.  St. John, no doubt, would have given the world to
follow, recall, retain her, when she thus left him; but he would not give
one chance of heaven, nor relinquish, for the elysium of her love, one
hope of the true, eternal Paradise.  Besides, he could not bind all that
he had in his nature--the rover, the aspirant, the poet, the priest--in
the limits of a single passion.  He could not--he would not--renounce his
wild field of mission warfare for the parlours and the peace of Vale
Hall.  I learnt so much from himself in an inroad I once, despite his
reserve, had the daring to make on his confidence.

Miss Oliver already honoured me with frequent visits to my cottage.  I
had learnt her whole character, which was without mystery or disguise:
she was coquettish but not heartless; exacting, but not worthlessly
selfish.  She had been indulged from her birth, but was not absolutely
spoilt.  She was hasty, but good-humoured; vain (she could not help it,
when every glance in the glass showed her such a flush of loveliness),
but not affected; liberal-handed; innocent of the pride of wealth;
ingenuous; sufficiently intelligent; gay, lively, and unthinking: she was
very charming, in short, even to a cool observer of her own sex like me;
but she was not profoundly interesting or thoroughly impressive.  A very
different sort of mind was hers from that, for instance, of the sisters
of St. John.  Still, I liked her almost as I liked my pupil Adele; except
that, for a child whom we have watched over and taught, a closer
affection is engendered than we can give an equally attractive adult
acquaintance.

She had taken an amiable caprice to me.  She said I was like Mr. Rivers,
only, certainly, she allowed, "not one-tenth so handsome, though I was a
nice neat little soul enough, but he was an angel."  I was, however,
good, clever, composed, and firm, like him.  I was a _lusus naturae_, she
affirmed, as a village schoolmistress: she was sure my previous history,
if known, would make a delightful romance.

One evening, while, with her usual child-like activity, and thoughtless
yet not offensive inquisitiveness, she was rummaging the cupboard and the
table-drawer of my little kitchen, she discovered first two French books,
a volume of Schiller, a German grammar and dictionary, and then my
drawing-materials and some sketches, including a pencil-head of a pretty
little cherub-like girl, one of my scholars, and sundry views from
nature, taken in the Vale of Morton and on the surrounding moors.  She
was first transfixed with surprise, and then electrified with delight.

"Had I done these pictures?  Did I know French and German?  What a
love--what a miracle I was!  I drew better than her master in the first
school in S-.  Would I sketch a portrait of her, to show to papa?"

"With pleasure," I replied; and I felt a thrill of artist-delight at the
idea of copying from so perfect and radiant a model.  She had then on a
dark-blue silk dress; her arms and her neck were bare; her only ornament
was her chestnut tresses, which waved over her shoulders with all the
wild grace of natural curls.  I took a sheet of fine card-board, and drew
a careful outline.  I promised myself the pleasure of colouring it; and,
as it was getting late then, I told her she must come and sit another
day.

She made such a report of me to her father, that Mr. Oliver himself
accompanied her next evening--a tall, massive-featured, middle-aged, and
grey-headed man, at whose side his lovely daughter looked like a bright
flower near a hoary turret.  He appeared a taciturn, and perhaps a proud
personage; but he was very kind to me.  The sketch of Rosamond's portrait
pleased him highly: he said I must make a finished picture of it.  He
insisted, too, on my coming the next day to spend the evening at Vale
Hall.

I went.  I found it a large, handsome residence, showing abundant
evidences of wealth in the proprietor.  Rosamond was full of glee and
pleasure all the time I stayed.  Her father was affable; and when he
entered into conversation with me after tea, he expressed in strong terms
his approbation of what I had done in Morton school, and said he only
feared, from what he saw and heard, I was too good for the place, and
would soon quit it for one more suitable.

"Indeed," cried Rosamond, "she is clever enough to be a governess in a
high family, papa."

I thought I would far rather be where I am than in any high family in the
land.  Mr. Oliver spoke of Mr. Rivers--of the Rivers family--with great
respect.  He said it was a very old name in that neighbourhood; that the
ancestors of the house were wealthy; that all Morton had once belonged to
them; that even now he considered the representative of that house might,
if he liked, make an alliance with the best.  He accounted it a pity that
so fine and talented a young man should have formed the design of going
out as a missionary; it was quite throwing a valuable life away.  It
appeared, then, that her father would throw no obstacle in the way of
Rosamond's union with St. John.  Mr. Oliver evidently regarded the young
clergyman's good birth, old name, and sacred profession as sufficient
compensation for the want of fortune.

It was the 5th of November, and a holiday.  My little servant, after
helping me to clean my house, was gone, well satisfied with the fee of a
penny for her aid.  All about me was spotless and bright--scoured floor,
polished grate, and well-rubbed chairs.  I had also made myself neat, and
had now the afternoon before me to spend as I would.

The translation of a few pages of German occupied an hour; then I got my
palette and pencils, and fell to the more soothing, because easier
occupation, of completing Rosamond Oliver's miniature.  The head was
finished already: there was but the background to tint and the drapery to
shade off; a touch of carmine, too, to add to the ripe lips--a soft curl
here and there to the tresses--a deeper tinge to the shadow of the lash
under the azured eyelid.  I was absorbed in the execution of these nice
details, when, after one rapid tap, my door unclosed, admitting St. John
Rivers.

"I am come to see how you are spending your holiday," he said.  "Not, I
hope, in thought?  No, that is well: while you draw you will not feel
lonely.  You see, I mistrust you still, though you have borne up
wonderfully so far.  I have brought you a book for evening solace," and
he laid on the table a new publication--a poem: one of those genuine
productions so often vouchsafed to the fortunate public of those days--the
golden age of modern literature.  Alas! the readers of our era are less
favoured.  But courage!  I will not pause either to accuse or repine.  I
know poetry is not dead, nor genius lost; nor has Mammon gained power
over either, to bind or slay: they will both assert their existence,
their presence, their liberty and strength again one day.  Powerful
angels, safe in heaven! they smile when sordid souls triumph, and feeble
ones weep over their destruction.  Poetry destroyed?  Genius banished?
No!  Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought.  No; they
not only live, but reign and redeem: and without their divine influence
spread everywhere, you would be in hell--the hell of your own meanness.

While I was eagerly glancing at the bright pages of "Marmion" (for
"Marmion" it was), St. John stooped to examine my drawing.  His tall
figure sprang erect again with a start: he said nothing.  I looked up at
him: he shunned my eye.  I knew his thoughts well, and could read his
heart plainly; at the moment I felt calmer and cooler than he: I had then
temporarily the advantage of him, and I conceived an inclination to do
him some good, if I could.

"With all his firmness and self-control," thought I, "he tasks himself
too far: locks every feeling and pang within--expresses, confesses,
imparts nothing.  I am sure it would benefit him to talk a little about
this sweet Rosamond, whom he thinks he ought not to marry: I will make
him talk."

I said first, "Take a chair, Mr. Rivers."  But he answered, as he always
did, that he could not stay.  "Very well," I responded, mentally, "stand
if you like; but you shall not go just yet, I am determined: solitude is
at least as bad for you as it is for me.  I'll try if I cannot discover
the secret spring of your confidence, and find an aperture in that marble
breast through which I can shed one drop of the balm of sympathy."

"Is this portrait like?" I asked bluntly.

"Like!  Like whom?  I did not observe it closely."

"You did, Mr. Rivers."

He almost started at my sudden and strange abruptness: he looked at me
astonished.  "Oh, that is nothing yet," I muttered within.  "I don't mean
to be baffled by a little stiffness on your part; I'm prepared to go to
considerable lengths."  I continued, "You observed it closely and
distinctly; but I have no objection to your looking at it again," and I
rose and placed it in his hand.

"A well-executed picture," he said; "very soft, clear colouring; very
graceful and correct drawing."

"Yes, yes; I know all that.  But what of the resemblance?  Who is it
like?"

Mastering some hesitation, he answered, "Miss Oliver, I presume."

"Of course.  And now, sir, to reward you for the accurate guess, I will
promise to paint you a careful and faithful duplicate of this very
picture, provided you admit that the gift would be acceptable to you.  I
don't wish to throw away my time and trouble on an offering you would
deem worthless."

He continued to gaze at the picture: the longer he looked, the firmer he
held it, the more he seemed to covet it.  "It is like!" he murmured; "the
eye is well managed: the colour, light, expression, are perfect.  It
smiles!"

"Would it comfort, or would it wound you to have a similar painting?  Tell
me that.  When you are at Madagascar, or at the Cape, or in India, would
it be a consolation to have that memento in your possession? or would the
sight of it bring recollections calculated to enervate and distress?"

He now furtively raised his eyes: he glanced at me, irresolute,
disturbed: he again surveyed the picture.

"That I should like to have it is certain: whether it would be judicious
or wise is another question."

Since I had ascertained that Rosamond really preferred him, and that her
father was not likely to oppose the match, I--less exalted in my views
than St. John--had been strongly disposed in my own heart to advocate
their union.  It seemed to me that, should he become the possessor of Mr.
Oliver's large fortune, he might do as much good with it as if he went
and laid his genius out to wither, and his strength to waste, under a
tropical sun.  With this persuasion I now answered--

"As far as I can see, it would be wiser and more judicious if you were to
take to yourself the original at once."

By this time he had sat down: he had laid the picture on the table before
him, and with his brow supported on both hands, hung fondly over it.  I
discerned he was now neither angry nor shocked at my audacity.  I saw
even that to be thus frankly addressed on a subject he had deemed
unapproachable--to hear it thus freely handled--was beginning to be felt
by him as a new pleasure--an unhoped-for relief.  Reserved people often
really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than
the expansive.  The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all; and to
"burst" with boldness and good-will into "the silent sea" of their souls
is often to confer on them the first of obligations.

"She likes you, I am sure," said I, as I stood behind his chair, "and her
father respects you.  Moreover, she is a sweet girl--rather thoughtless;
but you would have sufficient thought for both yourself and her.  You
ought to marry her."

"_Does_ she like me?" he asked.

"Certainly; better than she likes any one else.  She talks of you
continually: there is no subject she enjoys so much or touches upon so
often."

"It is very pleasant to hear this," he said--"very: go on for another
quarter of an hour."  And he actually took out his watch and laid it upon
the table to measure the time.

"But where is the use of going on," I asked, "when you are probably
preparing some iron blow of contradiction, or forging a fresh chain to
fetter your heart?"

"Don't imagine such hard things.  Fancy me yielding and melting, as I am
doing: human love rising like a freshly opened fountain in my mind and
overflowing with sweet inundation all the field I have so carefully and
with such labour prepared--so assiduously sown with the seeds of good
intentions, of self-denying plans.  And now it is deluged with a
nectarous flood--the young germs swamped--delicious poison cankering
them: now I see myself stretched on an ottoman in the drawing-room at
Vale Hall at my bride Rosamond Oliver's feet: she is talking to me with
her sweet voice--gazing down on me with those eyes your skilful hand has
copied so well--smiling at me with these coral lips.  She is mine--I am
hers--this present life and passing world suffice to me.  Hush! say
nothing--my heart is full of delight--my senses are entranced--let the
time I marked pass in peace."

I humoured him: the watch ticked on: he breathed fast and low: I stood
silent.  Amidst this hush the quartet sped; he replaced the watch, laid
the picture down, rose, and stood on the hearth.

"Now," said he, "that little space was given to delirium and delusion.  I
rested my temples on the breast of temptation, and put my neck
voluntarily under her yoke of flowers.  I tasted her cup.  The pillow was
burning: there is an asp in the garland: the wine has a bitter taste: her
promises are hollow--her offers false: I see and know all this."

I gazed at him in wonder.

"It is strange," pursued he, "that while I love Rosamond Oliver so
wildly--with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the object of
which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, fascinating--I experience at
the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness that she would not make me a
good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should
discover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months'
rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret.  This I know."

"Strange indeed!" I could not help ejaculating.

"While something in me," he went on, "is acutely sensible to her charms,
something else is as deeply impressed with her defects: they are such
that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to--co-operate in nothing
I undertook.  Rosamond a sufferer, a labourer, a female apostle?  Rosamond
a missionary's wife?  No!"

"But you need not be a missionary.  You might relinquish that scheme."

"Relinquish!  What! my vocation?  My great work?  My foundation laid on
earth for a mansion in heaven?  My hopes of being numbered in the band
who have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of bettering their
race--of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance--of substituting
peace for war--freedom for bondage--religion for superstition--the hope
of heaven for the fear of hell?  Must I relinquish that?  It is dearer
than the blood in my veins.  It is what I have to look forward to, and to
live for."

After a considerable pause, I said--"And Miss Oliver?  Are her
disappointment and sorrow of no interest to you?"

"Miss Oliver is ever surrounded by suitors and flatterers: in less than a
month, my image will be effaced from her heart.  She will forget me; and
will marry, probably, some one who will make her far happier than I
should do."

"You speak coolly enough; but you suffer in the conflict.  You are
wasting away."

"No.  If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects, yet
unsettled--my departure, continually procrastinated.  Only this morning,
I received intelligence that the successor, whose arrival I have been so
long expecting, cannot be ready to replace me for three months to come
yet; and perhaps the three months may extend to six."

"You tremble and become flushed whenever Miss Oliver enters the
schoolroom."

Again the surprised expression crossed his face.  He had not imagined
that a woman would dare to speak so to a man.  For me, I felt at home in
this sort of discourse.  I could never rest in communication with strong,
discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had passed
the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of
confidence, and won a place by their heart's very hearthstone.

"You are original," said he, "and not timid.  There is something brave in
your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye; but allow me to assure
you that you partially misinterpret my emotions.  You think them more
profound and potent than they are.  You give me a larger allowance of
sympathy than I have a just claim to.  When I colour, and when I shade
before Miss Oliver, I do not pity myself.  I scorn the weakness.  I know
it is ignoble: a mere fever of the flesh: not, I declare, the convulsion
of the soul.  _That_ is just as fixed as a rock, firm set in the depths
of a restless sea.  Know me to be what I am--a cold hard man."

I smiled incredulously.

"You have taken my confidence by storm," he continued, "and now it is
much at your service.  I am simply, in my original state--stripped of
that blood-bleached robe with which Christianity covers human deformity--a
cold, hard, ambitious man.  Natural affection only, of all the
sentiments, has permanent power over me.  Reason, and not feeling, is my
guide; my ambition is unlimited: my desire to rise higher, to do more
than others, insatiable.  I honour endurance, perseverance, industry,
talent; because these are the means by which men achieve great ends and
mount to lofty eminence.  I watch your career with interest, because I
consider you a specimen of a diligent, orderly, energetic woman: not
because I deeply compassionate what you have gone through, or what you
still suffer."

"You would describe yourself as a mere pagan philosopher," I said.

"No.  There is this difference between me and deistic philosophers: I
believe; and I believe the Gospel.  You missed your epithet.  I am not a
pagan, but a Christian philosopher--a follower of the sect of Jesus.  As
His disciple I adopt His pure, His merciful, His benignant doctrines.  I
advocate them: I am sworn to spread them.  Won in youth to religion, she
has cultivated my original qualities thus:--From the minute germ, natural
affection, she has developed the overshadowing tree, philanthropy.  From
the wild stringy root of human uprightness, she has reared a due sense of
the Divine justice.  Of the ambition to win power and renown for my
wretched self, she has formed the ambition to spread my Master's kingdom;
to achieve victories for the standard of the cross.  So much has religion
done for me; turning the original materials to the best account; pruning
and training nature.  But she could not eradicate nature: nor will it be
eradicated 'till this mortal shall put on immortality.'"

Having said this, he took his hat, which lay on the table beside my
palette.  Once more he looked at the portrait.

"She _is_ lovely," he murmured.  "She is well named the Rose of the
World, indeed!"

"And may I not paint one like it for you?"

"_Cui bono_?  No."

He drew over the picture the sheet of thin paper on which I was
accustomed to rest my hand in painting, to prevent the cardboard from
being sullied.  What he suddenly saw on this blank paper, it was
impossible for me to tell; but something had caught his eye.  He took it
up with a snatch; he looked at the edge; then shot a glance at me,
inexpressibly peculiar, and quite incomprehensible: a glance that seemed
to take and make note of every point in my shape, face, and dress; for it
traversed all, quick, keen as lightning.  His lips parted, as if to
speak: but he checked the coming sentence, whatever it was.

"What is the matter?" I asked.

"Nothing in the world," was the reply; and, replacing the paper, I saw
him dexterously tear a narrow slip from the margin.  It disappeared in
his glove; and, with one hasty nod and "good-afternoon," he vanished.

"Well!" I exclaimed, using an expression of the district, "that caps the
globe, however!"

I, in my turn, scrutinised the paper; but saw nothing on it save a few
dingy stains of paint where I had tried the tint in my pencil.  I
pondered the mystery a minute or two; but finding it insolvable, and
being certain it could not be of much moment, I dismissed, and soon
forgot it.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Jane moves into her cottage and a little orphan girl serves her as a handmaid. Her pupils at the school have very limited education. Only a few can read, and none can write or do arithmetic. She believes that she is in God's hands, for he has guided her away from a life as a mistress with Rochester, who said that they could live in France, to an honest vocation as a school mistress. Jane notices that St. John is deeply attracted to a local girl, Rosamond Oliver who is a benefactress of the school, but he suppresses his desire as he thinks it will interfere with the work he has obligated himself to do for God. As the months pass, Jane becomes an important member of the community who appreciate her devotion to their children, and their improvement is clear to see. Jane tries to encourage St. John to pursue his feelings for Rosamond, and she even suggests that she could paint a miniature for him. St. John decides that he can allow himself 15 minutes a day in which to dream about Rosamond. He tells Jane that although he has strong feelings for Rosamond, she would not be a suitable wife for a missionary. He looks over Jane's drawings and tears a strip from the edge of one of them and departs quickly.