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Brocklehurst had stood, and I enjoyed
my conqueror's solitude. First, I smiled to myself and felt
elate; but this fierce pleasure subsided in me as fast as did the
accelerated throb of my pulses. A child cannot quarrel with its
elders, as I had done; cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled
play, as I had given mine, without experiencing afterwards the pang
of remorse and the chill of reaction. A ridge of lighted heath,
alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of my
mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed: the same ridge, black
and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented as
meetly my subsequent condition, when half-an-hour's silence and
reflection had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness
of my hated and hating position.

Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic
wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour,
metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.
Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed's pardon; but
I knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was
the way to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting
every turbulent impulse of my nature.

I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce
speaking; fain find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than
that of sombre indignation. I took a book -- some Arabian tales;
I sat down and endeavoured to read. I could make no sense of
the subject; my own thoughts swam always between me and the page
I had usually found fascinating. I opened the glass-door in the
breakfast-room: the shrubbery was quite still: the black frost
reigned, unbroken by sun or breeze, through the grounds. I covered
my head and arms with the skirt of my frock, and went out to walk
in a part of the plantation which was quite sequestrated; but I
found no pleasure in the silent trees, the falling fir-cones, the
congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept by past winds in
heaps, and now stiffened together. I leaned against a gate, and
looked into an empty field where no sheep were feeding, where the
short grass was nipped and blanched. It was a very grey day; a
most opaque sky, "onding on snaw," canopied all; thence flakes felt
it intervals, which settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea
without melting. I stood, a wretched child enough, whispering to
myself over and over again, "What shall I do? -- what shall I do?"

All at once I heard a clear voice call, "Miss Jane! where are you?
Come to lunch!"

It was Bessie, I knew well enough; but I did not stir; her light
step came tripping down the path.

"You naughty little thing!" she said. "Why don't you come when
you are called?"

Bessie's presence, compared with the thoughts over which I had been
brooding, seemed cheerful; even though, as usual, she was somewhat

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