"The best things the world has!" I interrupted.

No. St. John, I will not marry you. I adhere to my resolution.

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."

Once more on the road to Thornfield, I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home.

"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.

And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh! I _cannot_ see, but I must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst. Whatever—whoever you are—be perceptible to the touch or I cannot live!

It is time some one undertook to rehumanise you, for I see you are being metamorphosed into a lion, or something of that sort. You have a 'faux air' of Nebuchadnezzar in the fields about you, that is certain: your hair reminds me of eagles' feathers; whether your nails are grown like birds' claws or not, I have not yet noticed.

Great God!—what delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me?