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actors; I no longer waited with interest for the curtain to rise; my
attention was absorbed by the spectators; my eyes, erewhile fixed on
the arch, were now irresistibly attracted to the semicircle of chairs.
What charade Colonel Dent and his party played, what word they
chose, how they acquitted themselves, I no longer remember; but I
still see the consultation which followed each scene: I see Mr.
Rochester turn to Miss Ingram, and Miss Ingram to him; I see her
incline her head towards him, till the jetty curls almost touch his
shoulder and wave against his cheek; I hear their mutual
whisperings; I recall their interchanged glances; and something even
of the feeling roused by the spectacle returns in memory at this
moment.
I have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr. Rochester: I
could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to
notice me- because I might pass hours in his presence, and he would
never once turn his eyes in my direction- because I saw all his
attentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me
with the hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and
imperious eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as
from an object too mean to merit observation. I could not unlove
him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady- because I
read daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting her-
because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship which, if
careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek, was yet, in
its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very pride,
irresistible.
There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances,
though much to create despair. Much too, you will think, reader, to
engender jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be
jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram's. But I was not jealous: or very
rarely;- the nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by
that word. Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too
inferior to excite the feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean
what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine: she had a
fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her
heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no
unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good;
she was not original: she used to repeat sounding phrases from
books: she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own. She
advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the
sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her.
Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to a
spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Adele: pushing her
away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach her;
sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating her with
coldness and acrimony. Other eyes besides mine watched these