How people feel when they are returning home after an absence, long or short, I did not know. I had never experienced the sensation. I had known what it was to come back to Gateshead…to come back from church to Lowood…Neither of these returnings were very pleasant or desirable; no magnet drew me to a given point, increasing in its strength of attraction the nearer I came. The return to Thornfield was yet to be tried.
I began to cherish hopes I had no right to conceive—that the match was broken off…that one or both parties had changed their minds. I used to look at my master’s face to see if it were sad or fierce; but I could not remember the time when it had been so uniformly clear of clouds or evil feelings…Never had he called me more frequently to his presence—never been kinder to me when there…Never had I loved him so well.
“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart!…it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal—as we are!
Yet, after all, my task was not an easy one; often I would rather have pleased than teased him. My future husband was becoming to me my whole heart, and more than the world—almost my hope of heaven.
“It was half dream, half reality; a woman did, I doubt not, enter your room: and that woman was, must have been, Grace Poole. You call her a strange being yourself; from all you know, you have reason so to call her.”
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