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suffice as a motive for wishing to get well: a change seemed near,
-- I desired and waited it in silence. It tarried, however: days
and weeks passed: I had regained my normal state of health, but
no new allusion was made to the subject over which I brooded. Mrs.
Reed surveyed me at times with a severe eye, but seldom addressed
me: since my illness, she had drawn a more marked line of separation
than ever between me and her own children; appointing me a small
closet to sleep in by myself, condemning me to take my meals
alone, and pass all my time in the nursery, while my cousins were
constantly in the drawing-room. Not a hint, however, did she drop
about sending me to school: still I felt an instinctive certainty
that she would not long endure me under the same roof with her;
for her glance, now more than ever, when turned on me, expressed
an insuperable and rooted aversion.

Eliza and Georgiana, evidently acting according to orders, spoke
to me as little as possible: John thrust his tongue in his cheek
whenever he saw me, and once attempted chastisement; but as I
instantly turned against him, roused by the same sentiment of deep
ire and desperate revolt which had stirred my corruption before, he
thought it better to desist, and ran from me tittering execrations,
and vowing I had burst his nose. I had indeed levelled at that
prominent feature as hard a blow as my knuckles could inflict;
and when I saw that either that or my look daunted him, I had the
greatest inclination to follow up my advantage to purpose; but he was
already with his mama. I heard him in a blubbering tone commence
the tale of how "that nasty Jane Eyre" had flown at him
like a mad cat: he was stopped rather harshly -

"Don't talk to me about her, John: I told you not to go near her;
she is not worthy of notice; I do not choose that either you or
your sisters should associate with her."

Here, leaning over the banister, I cried out suddenly,
and without at all deliberating on my words -

"They are not fit to associate with me."

Mrs. Reed was rather a stout woman; but, on hearing this strange
and audacious declaration, she ran nimbly up the stair, swept me
like a whirlwind into the nursery, and crushing me down on the edge
of my crib, dared me in an emphatic voice to rise from that place,
or utter one syllable during the remainder of the day.

"What would Uncle Reed say to you, if he were alive?" was my
scarcely voluntary demand. I say scarcely voluntary, for it seemed
as if my tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their
utterance: something spoke out of me over which I had no control.

"What?" said Mrs. Reed under her breath: her usually cold composed
grey eye became troubled with a look like fear; she took her hand
from my arm, and gazed at me as if she really did not know whether
I were child or fiend. I was now in for it.

"My Uncle Reed is in heaven, and can see all you do and think; and

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