Not his ascendancy alone, however, held me in thrall at present.
Of late it had been easy enough for me to look sad: a cankering
evil sat at my heart and drained my happiness at its source -- the
evil of suspense.
Perhaps you think I had forgotten Mr. Rochester, reader, amidst
these changes of place and fortune. Not for a moment. His idea
was still with me, because it was not a vapour sunshine could
disperse, nor a sand-traced effigy storms could wash away; it was
a name graven on a tablet, fated to last as long as the marble it
inscribed. The craving to know what had become of him followed
me everywhere; when I was at Morton, I re-entered my cottage every
evening to think of that; and now at Moor House, I sought my bedroom
each night to brood over it.
|