were acted, the strange
novelty by which they were characterised); and I had a keen delight in
receiving the new ideas he offered, in imagining the new pictures he
portrayed, and following him in thought through the new regions he
disclosed, never startled or troubled by one noxious allusion.

The ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint: the friendly
frankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me, drew me to
him. I felt at times as if he were my relation rather than my master:
yet he was imperious sometimes still; but I did not mind that; I saw it
was his way. So happy, so gratified did I become with this new interest
added to life, that I ceased to pine after kindred: my thin
crescent-destiny seemed to enlarge; the blanks of existence were filled
up; my bodily health improved; I gathered flesh and strength.

And was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No, reader: gratitude, and
many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object I
best liked to see; his presence in a room was more cheering than the
brightest fire. Yet I had not forgotten his faults; indeed, I could not,
for he brought them frequently before me. He was proud, sardonic, harsh
to inferiority of every description: in my secret soul I knew that his
great kindness to me was balanced by unjust severity to many others. He
was moody, too; unaccountably so; I more than once, when sent for to read
to him, found him sitting in his library alone, with his head bent on his
folded arms; and, when he looked up, a morose, almost a malignant, scowl
blackened his features. But I believed that his moodiness, his
harshness, and his former faults of morality (I say _former_, for now he
seemed corrected of them) had their source in some cruel cross of fate. I
believed he was naturally a man of better tendencies, higher principles,
and purer tastes than such as circumstances had developed, education
instilled, or destiny encouraged. I thought there were excellent
materials in him; though for the present they hung together somewhat
spoiled and tangled. I cannot deny that I grieved for his grief,
whatever that was, and would have given much to assuage it.

Though I had now extinguished my candle and was laid down in bed, I could
not sleep for thinking of his look when he paused in the avenue, and told
how his destiny had risen up before him, and dared him to be happy at
Thornfield.

"Why not?" I asked myself. "What alienat