f a little child: a
very small creature, too young and feeble to walk, and which shivered in
my cold arms, and wailed piteously in my ear. I thought, sir, that you
were on the road a long way before me; and I strained every nerve to
overtake you, and made effort on effort to utter your name and entreat
you to stop--but my movements were fettered, and my voice still died away
inarticulate; while you, I felt, withdrew farther and farther every
moment."

"And these dreams weigh on your spirits now, Jane, when I am close to
you? Little nervous subject! Forget visionary woe, and think only of
real happiness! You say you love me, Janet: yes--I will not forget that;
and you cannot deny it. _Those_ words did not die inarticulate on your
lips. I heard them clear and soft: a thought too solemn perhaps, but
sweet as music--'I think it is a glorious thing to have the hope of
living with you, Edward, because I love you.' Do you love me,
Jane?--repeat it."

"I do, sir--I do, with my whole heart."

"Well," he said, after some minutes' silence, "it is strange; but that
sentence has penetrated my breast painfully. Why? I think because you
said it with such an earnest, religious energy, and because your upward
gaze at me now is the very sublime of faith, truth, and devotion: it is
too much as if some spirit were near me. Look wicked, Jane: as you know
well how to look: coin one of your wild, shy, provoking smiles; tell me
you hate me--tease me, vex me; do anything but move me: I would rather be
incensed than saddened."

"I will tease you and vex you to your heart's content, when I have
finished my tale: but hear me to the end."

"I thought, Jane, you had told me all. I thought I had found the source
of your melancholy in a dream."

I shook my head. "What! is there more? But I will not believe it to be
anything important. I warn you of incredulity beforehand. Go on."

The disquietude of his air, the somewhat apprehensive impatience of his
manner, surprised me: but I proceeded.

"I dreamt another dream, sir: that Thornfield Hall was a dreary ruin, the
retreat of bats and owls. I thought that of all the stately front
nothing remained but a shell-like wall, very high and very
fragile-looking. I wandered, on a moonlight night, through the grass-
grown enclosure within: here I stumbled over a marble hearth, and there
over a fallen fragment of cornice. Wrapped up in a shawl, I still
carried the unknown little child: