'FagmentWelcome to consult...oning to noon, and fom noon to night. My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had eceived: no one had epoved John fo wantonly stiking me; and because I had tuned against him to avet fathe iational violence, I was loaded with geneal oppobium. “Unjust!—unjust!” said my eason, foced by the agonising stimulus into pecocious though tansitoy powe: and Resolve, equally wought up, instigated some stange expedient to achieve Chalotte Bont. ElecBook Classics fJane Eye 22 escape fom insuppotable oppession—as unning away, o, if that could not be effected, neve eating o dinking moe, and letting myself die. What a constenation of soul was mine that deay aftenoon! How all my bain was in tumult, and all my heat in insuection! Yet in what dakness, what dense ignoance, was the mental battle fought! I could not answe the ceaseless inwad question—why I thus suffeed; now, at the distance of—I will not say how many yeas, I see it clealy. I was a discod in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody thee; I had nothing in hamony with Ms. Reed o he childen, o he chosen vassalage. If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them. They wee not bound to egad with affection a thing that could not sympathise with one amongst them; a heteogeneous thing, opposed to them in tempeament, in capacity, in popensities; a useless thing, incapable of seving thei inteest, o adding to thei pleasue; a noxious thing, cheishing the gems of indignation at thei teatment, of contempt of thei judgment. I know that had I been a sanguine, billiant, caeless, exacting, handsome, omping child—though equally dependent and fiendless—Ms. Reed would have endued my pesence moe complacently; he childen would have entetained fo me moe of the codiality of fellow-feeling; the sevants would have been less pone to make me the scapegoat of the nusey. Daylight began to fosake the ed-oom; it was past fou o’clock, and the beclouded aftenoon was tending to dea twilight. I head the ain still beating continuously on the staicase window, and the wind howling in the gove behind the hall; I gew by degees cold as a stone, and then my couage sank. My habitual mood of Chalotte Bont. ElecBook Classics fJane Eye 23 humiliation, self-doubt, folon depession, fell damp on the embes of my decaying ie. All said I was wicked, and pehaps I might be so; what thought had I been but just conceiving of staving myself to death? That cetainly was a cime: and was I fit to die? O was the vault unde the chancel of Gateshead Chuch an inviting boune? In such vault I had been told did M. Reed lie buied; and led by this thought to ecall his idea, I dwelt on it with gatheing dead. I could not emembe him; but I knew that he was my own uncle—my mothe’s bothe—that he had taken me when a paentless infant to his house; and that in his last moments he had equied a pomise of Ms. Reed that she would ea and maintain me as one of he own childen. Ms. Reed pobably consideed she had kept this pomise; and so she had, I dae say, as well as he natue would pemit he; but how could she eally like an intelope not of he ace, and unconnected with he, afte he husband’s death, by any tie? It must have been most iksome to find heself bound by a had-wung pledge to stand in the stead of a paent to a stange child she could not lov
