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his reserve was again frozen over, and my frankness was congealed
beneath it. He had not kept his promise of treating me like his
sisters; he continually made little, chilling differences between
us, which did not at all tend to the development of cordiality: in
short, now that I was acknowledged his kinswoman, and lived under
the same roof with him, I felt the distance between us to be far
greater than when he had known me only as the village
schoolmistress. When I remembered how far I had once been admitted
to his confidence, I could hardly comprehend his present frigidity.
Such being the case, I felt not a little surprised when he raised
his head suddenly from the desk over which he was stooping, and said-
'You see, Jane, the battle is fought and the victory won.'
Startled at being thus addressed, I did not immediately reply:
after a moment's hesitation I answered-
'But are you sure you are not in the position of those conquerors
whose triumphs have cost them too dear? Would not such another ruin
you?'
'I think not; and if I were, it does not much signify; I shall
never be called upon to contend for such another. The event of the
conflict is decisive: my way is now clear; I thank God for it!' So
saying, he returned to his papers and his silence.
As our mutual happiness (i.e., Diana's, Mary's, and mine) settled
into a quieter character, and we resumed our usual habits and
regular studies, St. John stayed more at home: he sat with us in the
same room, sometimes for hours together. While Mary drew, Diana
pursued a course of encyclopaedic reading she had (to my awe and
amazement) undertaken, and I fagged away at German, he pondered a
mystic lore of his own: that of some Eastern tongue, the acquisition
of which he thought necessary to his plans.
Thus engaged, he appeared, sitting in his own recess, quiet and
absorbed enough; but that blue eye of his had a habit of leaving the
outlandish-looking grammar, and wandering over, and sometimes fixing
upon us, his fellow-students, with a curious intensity of observation:
if caught, it would be instantly withdrawn; yet ever and anon, it
returned searchingly to our table. I wondered what it meant: I
wondered, too, at the punctual satisfaction he never failed to exhibit
on an occasion that seemed to me of small moment, namely, my weekly
visit to Morton school; and still more was I puzzled when, if the
day was unfavourable, if there was snow, or rain, or high wind, and
his sisters urged me not to go, he would invariably make light of
their solicitude, and encourage me to accomplish the task without
regard to the elements.
'Jane is not such a weakling as you would make her,' he would
say: 'she can bear a mountain blast, or a shower, or a few flakes of
snow, as well as any of us. Her constitution is both sound and
elastic;- better calculated to endure variations of climate than
many more robust.'