that evening, after
the first one; a hymn of Christian gladness and strength, to an air as
spirited as the words. Both words and air rang in her mind, through all
the multifarious thoughts she was thinking; they floated through and
sounded behind them like a strain of the blessed. Eleanor had taken one
glance at Mr. Rhys while it was singing; and the remembrance of his
face stung her as the sight of an angel might have done. The counter
recollection of her own misery in the summer at the time she was ill;
the longing want of that security and hope and consequent rest of mind,
was vividly with her too. Pushed by fear and desire, Eleanor's
resolution was taken. She saw not the way clear, she did not know yet
the "wicket-gate" towards which Bunyan's Pilgrim was directed; like him
however she resolved to "keep the light in her eye, and run."

The fire had died all out; the grey ashes were cold; she was very cold
herself, but did not know it. The night had waned away, and a light had
sprung in at the window which Eleanor thought must be the dawn. It was
not; it was the old moon just risen, and struggling through the fog.
But the moon was the herald of dawn; and Eleanor got up from the
hearth, feeling old and stiff; as if she had suddenly put on twenty
years of age more than she came to the village with. The room was quite
too cold for Jane, she remembered; and softly she went up and down for
kindling and lighted up the fire again. Till she had done that, she
felt grey and stern, like the November morning; but when the fire
crackled and sparkled before her, and gave its cheery look and
comforting warmth to her chilled senses, some curious sympathy with
times that were gone and that she dared not hope to see again, smote
Eleanor with a softer sorrow; and she wept a very rain of new tears.
These did her good; they washed some of the bitterness out of her; and
after that she sat thinking how she should manage; when Mr. Rhys's
parting words suddenly recurred to her. A blanker ignorance how they
should be followed, can scarcely be imagined, in a person of general
sense and knowledge. Nevertheless, she bowed herself on the hearth,
surely not more in form than in feeling, and besought of that One whose
aid she knew not how to ask, that he would yet give it to her and
fulfil all her desires. Eleanor was exhausted then. She sat in a stupor
of resting, till the faint illumination of the moon was really replaced
by a growing and broade