o the scenes of
childhood: I dreamt I lay in the red-room at Gateshead; that the night
was dark, and my mind impressed with strange fears. The light that long
ago had struck me into syncope, recalled in this vision, seemed glidingly
to mount the wall, and tremblingly to pause in the centre of the obscured
ceiling. I lifted up my head to look: the roof resolved to clouds, high
and dim; the gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapours she is about
to sever. I watched her come--watched with the strangest anticipation;
as though some word of doom were to be written on her disk. She broke
forth as never moon yet burst from cloud: a hand first penetrated the
sable folds and waved them away; then, not a moon, but a white human form
shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and
gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone,
yet so near, it whispered in my heart--

"My daughter, flee temptation."

"Mother, I will."

So I answered after I had waked from the trance-like dream. It was yet
night, but July nights are short: soon after midnight, dawn comes. "It
cannot be too early to commence the task I have to fulfil," thought I. I
rose: I was dressed; for I had taken off nothing but my shoes. I knew
where to find in my drawers some linen, a locket, a ring. In seeking
these articles, I encountered the beads of a pearl necklace Mr. Rochester
had forced me to accept a few days ago. I left that; it was not mine: it
was the visionary bride's who had melted in air. The other articles I
made up in a parcel; my purse, containing twenty shillings (it was all I
had), I put in my pocket: I tied on my straw bonnet, pinned my shawl,
took the parcel and my slippers, which I would not put on yet, and stole
from my room.

"Farewell, kind Mrs. Fairfax!" I whispered, as I glided past her door.
"Farewell, my darling Adele!" I said, as I glanced towards the nursery.
No thought could be admitted of entering to embrace her. I had to
deceive a fine ear: for aught I knew it might now be listening.

I would have got past Mr. Rochester's chamber without a pause; but my
heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot was forced
to stop also. No sleep was there: the inmate was walking restlessly from
wall to wall; and again and again he sighed while I listened. There was
a heaven--a temporary heaven--in this room for me, if I chose: I had but
to go in and to say--

"Mr. Roch