count of their final
interview:--

"When I last saw Charlotte (Jan. 1845), she told me she had quite decided
to stay at home. She owned she did not like it. Her health was weak.
She said she should like any change at first, as she had liked Brussels
at first, and she thought that there must be some possibility for some
people of having a life of more variety and more communion with human
kind, but she saw none for her. I told her very warmly, that she ought
not to stay at home; that to spend the next five years at home, in
solitude and weak health, would ruin her; that she would never recover
it. Such a dark shadow came over her face when I said, 'Think of what
you'll be five years hence!' that I stopped, and said, 'Don't cry,
Charlotte!' She did not cry, but went on walking up and down the room,
and said in a little while, 'But I intend to stay, Polly.'"

A few weeks after she parted from Mary, she gives this account of her
days at Haworth.

"March 24th, 1845.

"I can hardly tell you how time gets on at Haworth. There is no event
whatever to mark its progress. One day resembles another; and all have
heavy, lifeless physiognomies. Sunday, baking-day, and Saturday, are the
only ones that have any distinctive mark. Meantime, life wears away. I
shall soon be thirty; and I have done nothing yet. Sometimes I get
melancholy at the prospect before and behind me. Yet it is wrong and
foolish to repine. Undoubtedly, my duty directs me to stay at home for
the present. There was a time when Haworth was a very pleasant place to
me; it is not so now. I feel as if we were all buried here. I long to
travel; to work; to live a life of action. Excuse me, dear, for
troubling you with my fruitless wishes. I will put by the rest, and not
trouble you with them. You must write to me. If you knew how welcome
your letters are, you would write very often. Your letters, and the
French newspapers, are the only messengers that come to me from the outer
world beyond our moors; and very welcome messengers they are."

One of her daily employments was to read to her father, and it required a
little gentle diplomacy on her part to effect this duty; for there were
times when the offer of another to do what he had been so long accustomed
to do for himself, only reminded him too painfully of the deprivation
under which he was suffering. And, in secret, she, too, dreaded a
similar loss for herself. Long-continued ill health, a de