s unstrung: for a moment
I am beyond my own mastery. What does it mean? I did not think I should
tremble in this way when I saw him, or lose my voice or the power of
motion in his presence. I will go back as soon as I can stir: I need not
make an absolute fool of myself. I know another way to the house. It
does not signify if I knew twenty ways; for he has seen me.

"Hillo!" he cries; and he puts up his book and his pencil. "There you
are! Come on, if you please."

I suppose I do come on; though in what fashion I know not; being scarcely
cognisant of my movements, and solicitous only to appear calm; and, above
all, to control the working muscles of my face--which I feel rebel
insolently against my will, and struggle to express what I had resolved
to conceal. But I have a veil--it is down: I may make shift yet to
behave with decent composure.

"And this is Jane Eyre? Are you coming from Millcote, and on foot?
Yes--just one of your tricks: not to send for a carriage, and come
clattering over street and road like a common mortal, but to steal into
the vicinage of your home along with twilight, just as if you were a
dream or a shade. What the deuce have you done with yourself this last
month?"

"I have been with my aunt, sir, who is dead."

"A true Janian reply! Good angels be my guard! She comes from the other
world--from the abode of people who are dead; and tells me so when she
meets me alone here in the gloaming! If I dared, I'd touch you, to see
if you are substance or shadow, you elf!--but I'd as soon offer to take
hold of a blue _ignis fatuus_ light in a marsh. Truant! truant!" he
added, when he had paused an instant. "Absent from me a whole month, and
forgetting me quite, I'll be sworn!"

I knew there would be pleasure in meeting my master again, even though
broken by the fear that he was so soon to cease to be my master, and by
the knowledge that I was nothing to him: but there was ever in Mr.
Rochester (so at least I thought) such a wealth of the power of
communicating happiness, that to taste but of the crumbs he scattered to
stray and stranger birds like me, was to feast genially. His last words
were balm: they seemed to imply that it imported something to him whether
I forgot him or not. And he had spoken of Thornfield as my home--would
that it were my home!

He did not leave the stile, and I hardly liked to ask to go by. I
inquired soon if he had not been to London.

"Yes; I suppose