employment and an asylum for her--indeed, that he
has already heard of a charming situation in the depths of Ireland--all
with a brutal jocoseness which most women of spirit, unless grievously
despairing of any other lover, would have resented, and any woman of
sense would have seen through. But Jane, that profound reader of the
human heart, and especially of Mr. Rochester's, does neither. She meekly
hopes she may be allowed to stay where she is till she has found another
shelter to betake herself to--she does not fancy going to Ireland--Why?

"It is a long way off, Sir." "No matter--a girl of your sense will not
object to the voyage or the distance." "Not the voyage, but the
distance, Sir; and then the sea is a barrier--" "From what, Jane?"
"From England, and from Thornfield; and--" "Well?" "From _you_, Sir."
--vol. ii, p. 205.

and then the lady bursts into tears in the most approved fashion.

Although so clever in giving hints, how wonderfully slow she is in
taking them! Even when, tired of his cat's play, Mr. Rochester proceeds
to rather indubitable demonstrations of affection--"enclosing me in his
arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips"--Jane
has no idea what he can mean. Some ladies would have thought it high
time to leave the Squire alone with his chestnut tree; or, at all
events, unnecessary to keep up that tone of high-souled feminine
obtusity which they are quite justified in adopting if gentlemen will
not speak out--but Jane again does neither. Not that we say she was
wrong, but quite the reverse, considering the circumstances of the case--
Mr. Rochester was her master, and "Duchess or nothing" was her first
duty--only she was not quite so artless as the author would have us
suppose.

But if the manner in which she secures the prize be not inadmissible
according to the rules of the art, that in which she manages it when
caught, is quite without authority or precedent, except perhaps in the
servants' hall. Most lover's play is wearisome and nonsensical to the
lookers on--but the part Jane assumes is one which could only be
efficiently sustained by the substitution of Sam for her master. Coarse
as Mr. Rochester is, one winces for him under the infliction of this
housemaid _beau ideal_ of the arts of coquetry. A little more, and we
should have flung the book aside to lie for ever among the trumpery with
which such scenes ally it; but it were a pity to have halted here, for
wo