or stupid, coarse-minded misapprehension of
one's meaning are the usual rewards of candour. Not three in three
thousand raw school-girl-governesses would have answered me as you have
just done. But I don't mean to flatter you: if you are cast in a
different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.
And then, after all, I go too fast in my conclusions: for what I yet
know, you may be no better than the rest; you may have intolerable
defects to counterbalance your few good points."

"And so may you," I thought. My eye met his as the idea crossed my mind:
he seemed to read the glance, answering as if its import had been spoken
as well as imagined--

"Yes, yes, you are right," said he; "I have plenty of faults of my own: I
know it, and I don't wish to palliate them, I assure you. God wot I need
not be too severe about others; I have a past existence, a series of
deeds, a colour of life to contemplate within my own breast, which might
well call my sneers and censures from my neighbours to myself. I
started, or rather (for like other defaulters, I like to lay half the
blame on ill fortune and adverse circumstances) was thrust on to a wrong
tack at the age of one-and-twenty, and have never recovered the right
course since: but I might have been very different; I might have been as
good as you--wiser--almost as stainless. I envy you your peace of mind,
your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory. Little girl, a memory
without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure--an
inexhaustible source of pure refreshment: is it not?"

"How was your memory when you were eighteen, sir?"

"All right then; limpid, salubrious: no gush of bilge water had turned it
to fetid puddle. I was your equal at eighteen--quite your equal. Nature
meant me to be, on the whole, a good man, Miss Eyre; one of the better
kind, and you see I am not so. You would say you don't see it; at least
I flatter myself I read as much in your eye (beware, by-the-bye, what you
express with that organ; I am quick at interpreting its language). Then
take my word for it,--I am not a villain: you are not to suppose that--not
to attribute to me any such bad eminence; but, owing, I verily believe,
rather to circumstances than to my natural bent, I am a trite commonplace
sinner, hackneyed in all the poor petty dissipations with which the rich
and worthless try to put on life. Do you wonder that I avow this to you?
Know, that in the