n for disgust.

Meantime, let me ask myself one question--Which is better?--To have
surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort--no
struggle;--but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on
the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the
luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr.
Rochester's mistress; delirious with his love half my time--for he
would--oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while. He _did_ love
me--no one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know the sweet
homage given to beauty, youth, and grace--for never to any one else shall
I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me--it is what
no man besides will ever be.--But where am I wandering, and what am I
saying, and above all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a
slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles--fevered with delusive bliss one
hour--suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the
next--or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy
mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?

Yes; I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law, and
scorned and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment. God
directed me to a correct choice: I thank His providence for the guidance!

Having brought my eventide musings to this point, I rose, went to my
door, and looked at the sunset of the harvest-day, and at the quiet
fields before my cottage, which, with the school, was distant half a mile
from the village. The birds were singing their last strains--

"The air was mild, the dew was balm."

While I looked, I thought myself happy, and was surprised to find myself
ere long weeping--and why? For the doom which had reft me from adhesion
to my master: for him I was no more to see; for the desperate grief and
fatal fury--consequences of my departure--which might now, perhaps, be
dragging him from the path of right, too far to leave hope of ultimate
restoration thither. At this thought, I turned my face aside from the
lovely sky of eve and lonely vale of Morton--I say _lonely_, for in that
bend of it visible to me there was no building apparent save the church
and the parsonage, half-hid in trees, and, quite at the extremity, the
roof of Vale Hall, where the rich Mr. Oliver and his daughter lived. I
hid my eyes, and leant my head against the stone frame of my door; but
soon a sl