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4 - '

Twenty years ago, a poor curate- never mind his name at this moment- fell in love with a rich man'

s daughter;

she fell in love with him, and married him, against the advice of all her friends, who consequently disowned her immediately after the wedding. Before two years passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly side by side under one slab. (I have seen their grave;

it formed part of the pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black old daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity received in her lap- cold as that of the snow-drift I almost stuck fast in to- night. Charity carried the friendless thing to the house of its rich maternal relations;

it was reared by an aunt-in-law, called (I come to names now) Mrs. Reed of Gateshead. You start- did you hear a noise? I daresay it is only a rat scrambling along the rafters of the adjoining schoolroom: it was a barn before I had it repaired and altered, and barns are generally haunted by rats.- To proceed. Mrs. Reed kept the orphan ten years: whether it was happy or not with her, I cannot say, never having been told;

but at the end of that time she transferred it to a place you know- being no other than Lowood School, where you so long resided yourself. It seems her career there was very honourable: from a pupil, she became a teacher, like yourself- really it strikes me there are parallel points in her history and yours- she left it to be a governess: there, again, your fates wereanalogous;

she undertook the education of the ward of a certain Mr. Rochester.'

'

Mr. Rivers!'

I interrupted. '

I can guess your feelings,'

he said, '

but restrain them for a while: I have nearly finished;

hear me to the end. Of Mr. Rochester'

s character I know nothing, but the one fact that he professed to offer honourable marriage to this young girl, and that at the very altar she discovered he had a wife yet alive, though a lunatic. What his subsequent conduct and proposals were is a matter of pure conjecture;

but when an event transpired which rendered inquiry after the governess necessary, it was discoveredshe was gone- no one could tell when, where, or how. She had left Thor........