ave
talked, face to face, with what I reverence, with what I delight
in--with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you,
Mr. Rochester, and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I
absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity for
departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death." And the
comedy is worse. Jane elaborates too much in those delicious things she
says to Rochester. Rochester himself provokes the parodist. (Such
manners as Rochester's were unknown in mid-Victorian literature.)

"He continued to send for me punctually the moment the clock struck
seven; though when I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed
terms as 'love' and 'darling' on his lips: the best words at my disposal
were 'provoking', 'malicious elf,' 'sprite', 'changeling', etc. For
caresses, too, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch
on the arm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear. It was
all right: at present I decidedly preferred these fierce favours to
anything more tender."

Yet there is comedy, pure comedy in those scenes, though never
sustained, and never wrought to the inevitable dramatic climax. Jane is
delightful when she asks Rochester whether the frown on his forehead
will be his "married look", and when she tells him to make a
dressing-gown for himself out of the pearl-grey silk, "and an infinite
series of waistcoats out of the black satin". _The Quarterly_ was much
too hard on the earlier _cadeau_ scene, with Rochester and Jane and
Adele, which is admirable in its suggestion of Jane's shyness and
precision.

_"'N'est-ce pas, Monsieur, qu'il y a un cadeau pour Mademoiselle Eyre,
dans votre petit coffre?'"_

"'Who talks of _cadeaux_?' said he gruffly; 'did you expect a present,
Miss Eyre? Are you fond of presents?' and he searched my face with eyes
that I saw were dark, irate, and piercing.

"'I hardly know, sir; I have little experience of them; they are
generally thought pleasant things.'"

Charlotte Bronte was on her own ground there. But you tremble when she
leaves it; you shudder throughout the awful drawing-room comedy of
Blanche Ingram. Blanche says to her mother: "Am I right, Baroness Ingram
of Ingram Park?" And her mother says to Blanche, "My lily-flower, you
are right now, as always." Blanche says to Rochester, "Signor Eduardo,
are you in voice to-night?" and he, "Donna Bianca, if you command it, I
will be." And Blanche says t