'Go,' said Hope, 'and live again in Europe: there it is not known what a sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound to you.'

Your pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of love: its anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion.

"If I could go out of life now, without too sharp a pang, it would be well for me," I thought; "then I should not have to make the effort of cracking my heart-strings in rending them from among Mr. Rochester's."

'This life,' said I at last, 'is hell: this is the air—those are the sounds of the bottomless pit! I have a right to deliver myself from it if I can.'

Oh, my poor master—once almost my husband—whom I had often called "my dear Edward!"

"You don't know him—don't pronounce an opinion upon him," I said, with warmth.

My heart leapt up: I was already on my master's very lands. It fell again: the thought struck it:—"Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught you know: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which you hasten, who besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and you have nothing to do with him: you dare not speak to him or seek his presence."

"The late!" I gasped. "Is he dead?" "I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Edward's father," he explained. I breathed again: my blood resumed its flow. Fully assured by these words that Mr. Edward—_my_ Mr. Rochester (God bless him, wherever he was!)—was at least alive: was, in short, "the present gentleman."

"Yes, yes: he is alive; but many think he had better be dead." "Why? How?" My blood was again running cold. "Where is he?" I demanded. "Is he in England?" "Ay—ay—he's in England; he can't get out of England, I fancy—he's a fixture now."

You mocking changeling—fairy-born and human-bred! You make me feel as I have not felt these twelve months. If Saul could have had you for his David, the evil spirit would have been exorcised without the aid of the harp.