"Is this Jane Eyre?" she said.
"Yes, Aunt Reed. How are you, dear aunt?"
I had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again: I thought
it no sin to forget and break that vow now. My fingers had fastened
on her hand which lay outside the sheet: had she pressed mine
kindly, I should at that moment have experienced true pleasure. But
unimpressionable natures are not so soon softened, nor are natural
antipathies so readily eradicated. Mrs. Reed took her hand away,
and, turning her face rather from me, she remarked that the night
was warm. Again she regarded me so icily, I felt at once that
her opinion of me -- her feeling towards me -- was unchanged and
unchangeable. I knew by her stony eye -- opaque to tenderness,
indissoluble to tears -- that she was resolved to consider me bad
to the last; because to believe me good would give her no generous
pleasure: only a sense of mortification.
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