u with miserable
cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations when you thus started up
and poured out the venom of your mind: I felt fear as if an animal that I
had struck or pushed had looked up at me with human eyes and cursed me in
a man's voice.--Bring me some water! Oh, make haste!"

"Dear Mrs. Reed," said I, as I offered her the draught she required,
"think no more of all this, let it pass away from your mind. Forgive me
for my passionate language: I was a child then; eight, nine years have
passed since that day."

She heeded nothing of what I said; but when she had tasted the water and
drawn breath, she went on thus--

"I tell you I could not forget it; and I took my revenge: for you to be
adopted by your uncle, and placed in a state of ease and comfort, was
what I could not endure. I wrote to him; I said I was sorry for his
disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead: she had died of typhus fever at
Lowood. Now act as you please: write and contradict my assertion--expose
my falsehood as soon as you like. You were born, I think, to be my
torment: my last hour is racked by the recollection of a deed which, but
for you, I should never have been tempted to commit."

"If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt, and to
regard me with kindness and forgiveness"

"You have a very bad disposition," said she, "and one to this day I feel
it impossible to understand: how for nine years you could be patient and
quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and
violence, I can never comprehend."

"My disposition is not so bad as you think: I am passionate, but not
vindictive. Many a time, as a little child, I should have been glad to
love you if you would have let me; and I long earnestly to be reconciled
to you now: kiss me, aunt."

I approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it. She said I
oppressed her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded water. As I
laid her down--for I raised her and supported her on my arm while she
drank--I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine: the feeble
fingers shrank from my touch--the glazing eyes shunned my gaze.

"Love me, then, or hate me, as you will," I said at last, "you have my
full and free forgiveness: ask now for God's, and be at peace."

Poor, suffering woman! it was too late for her to make now the effort to
change her habitual frame of mind: living, she had ever hated me--dying,
she must hate me still.

Th