engrossed in listening. And when I had finished, she
looked aside with a transient, half-sly smile, and glanced at me again
covertly, so that I could not see herself for seeing her eyes; and she
laughed lightly.

"It is indeed a strange journey," she replied. "But I fear I cannot in
the least direct you. I have never ventured my own self beyond the
woods, lest--I should penetrate too far. But you are tired and hungry.
Will you please walk on a few steps till you come to a stone seat? My
name is Rochester--Jane Rochester"--she glanced up between the hollies
with a sigh that was all but laughter--"Jane Eyre, you know."

I went on as she had bidden, and seated myself before an old, white,
many-windowed house, squatting, like an owl at noon, beneath its green
covert. In a few minutes the great dog with dripping jowl passed
almost like reality, and after him his mistress, and on her arm her
master, Mr. Rochester.

There seemed a night of darkness in that scarred face, and stars
unearthly bright. He peered dimly at me, leaning heavily on Jane's
arm, his left hand plunged into the bosom of his coat. And when he was
come near, he lifted his hat to me with a kind of Spanish gravity.

"Is this the gentleman, Jane?" he enquired.

"Yes, sir."

"He's young!" he muttered.

"For otherwise he would not be here," she replied.

"Was the gate bolted, then?" he asked.

"Mr. Rochester desires to know if you had the audacity, sir, to scale
his garden wall," Jane said, turning sharply on me. "Shall I count the
strawberries, sir?" she added over her shoulder."

"Jane, Jane!" he exclaimed testily. "I have no wish to be uncivil,
sir. We are not of the world--a mere dark satellite. I am dim; and
suspicious of strangers, as this one treacherous eye should manifest.
I'll but ask your name, sir,--there are yet a few names left, once
pleasing to my ear."

"My name is Brocken, sir--Henry Brocken," I answered.

"And--did you walk? Pah! there's the mystery! God knows how else you
could have come, unless you are a modern Ganymede. Where then's your
aquiline steed, sir? We have no neighbours here--none to stare, and
pry, and prate, and slander."

I informed him that I was as ignorant as he what power had spirited me
to his house, but that so far as obvious means went, my old horse was
probably by this time fast asleep beside the green gate at which I had
entered. Jane stood on tip-toe and whispered in his ear, and, nodding
imperiously at