I both wished and feared to see Mr. Rochester on the day which followed this sleepless night: I wao hear his voice agai feared to meet his eye. During the early part of the m, I momentarily expected his ing; he was not in the frequent habit of entering the schoolroom, but he did step in for a few minutes sometimes, and I had the impression that he was sure to visit it that day.
But the m passed just as usual: nothing happeo interrupt the quiet course of Adèle’s studies; only soon after breakfast, I heard some bustle in the neighbourhood of Mr. Rochester’s chamber, Mrs. Fairfax’s voice, and Leah’s, and the cook’s—that is, John’s wife—and even John’s own gruff tohere were exclamations of “What a mercy master was not burnt in his bed!” “It is always dangerous to keep a dle lit at night.” “How providential that he had presenind to think of the water-jug!” “I wonder he waked nobody!” “It is to be hoped he will not take cold with sleeping on the library sofa,” &c.
To much fabulation succeeded a sound of scrubbing aing thts; and when I passed the room, in going downstairs to dinner, I saw through the open door that all was agaiored to plete order; only the bed was stripped of its hangings. Leah stood up in the window-seat, rubbing the panes of glass dimmed with smoke. I was about to address her, for I wished to know what at had been given of the affair: but, on advang, I saw a sed person in the chamber—a woman sitting on a chair by the bedside, and sewing rings to new curtains. That woman was no other than Grace Poole.
There she sat, staid and taciturn-looking, as usual, in her brown stuff gown, her check apron, white handkerchief, and cap. She was i on her work, in which her whole thoughts seemed absorbed: on her hard forehead, and in her onplace features, was nothiher of the paleness or desperation one would have expected to see marking the tenance of a woman who had attempted murder, and whose intended victim had followed her last night to her lair, and (as I believed), charged her with the crime she wished to perpetrate. I was amazed—founded. She looked up, while I still gazed at her: no start, no increase or failure of colour betrayed emotion, sciousness of guilt, or fear of dete. She said “Good m, Miss,” in her usual phlegmatid brief manner; and taking up another ring and more tape, went on with her sewing.
“I will put her to some test,” thought I: “such absolute imperability is past prehension.”
“Good m, Grace,” I said. “Has anything happened here? I thought I heard the servants all talking together a while ago.”
“Only master had been reading in his bed last night; he fell asleep with his dle lit, and the curtains got on fire; but, fortunately, he awoke before the bed-clothes or the wood-work caught, and trived to quench the flames with the water in the ewer.
“A strange affair!” I said, in a low voice: then, looking at her fixedly—“Did Mr. Rochester wake nobody? Did no one hear him move?”
She again raised her eyes to me, and this time there was something of sciousness in their expression. She seemed to examine me warily; then she answered—
“The servants sleep so far off, you know, Miss, they would not be likely to hear. Mrs. Fairfax’s room and yours are the o master’s; but Mrs. Fairfax said she heard nothing: when people get elderly, they often sleep heavy.” She paused, and then added, with a sort of assumed indifference, but still in a marked and signifit tone—“But you are young
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