Jane Eyre - Pennsylvania State University

Charlotte Brontë
cient in life: her face lacked expression, her eye lustre; she had Mrs. Dent had kindly taken her hand, and given her a kiss.
nothing to say, and having once taken her seat, remained fixed Amy and Louisa Eshton had cried out simultaneously—
like a statue in its niche. The sisters were both attired in spot- ”What a love of a child!”
less white.
And then they had called her to a sofa, where she now sat,
And did I now think Miss Ingram such a choice as Mr. ensconced between them, chattering alternately in French and
Rochester would be likely to make? I could not tell—I did broken English; absorbing not only the young ladies’ atten-
not know his taste in female beauty. If he liked the majestic, tion, but that of Mrs. Eshton and Lady Lynn, and getting
she was the very type of majesty: then she was accomplished, spoilt to her heart’s content.
sprightly. Most gentlemen would admire her, I thought; and At last coffee is brought in, and the gentlemen are sum-
that he did admire her, I already seemed to have obtained moned. I sit in the shade—if any shade there be in this bril-
proof: to remove the last shade of doubt, it remained but to liantly-lit apartment; the window-curtain half hides me. Again
see them together.
the arch yawns; they come. The collective appearance of the
You are not to suppose, reader, that Adele has all this time gentlemen, like that of the ladies, is very imposing: they are
been sitting motionless on the stool at my feet: no; when the all costumed in black; most of them are tall, some young.
ladies entered, she rose, advanced to meet them, made a stately Henry and Frederick Lynn are very dashing sparks indeed;
reverence, and said with gravity—
and Colonel Dent is a fine soldierly man. Mr. Eshton, the
“Bon jour, mesdames.”
magistrate of the district, is gentleman-like: his hair is quite
And Miss Ingram had looked down at her with a mocking white, his eyebrows and whiskers still dark, which gives him
air, and exclaimed, “Oh, what a little puppet!”
something of the appearance of a “pere noble de theatre.” Lord
Lady Lynn had remarked, “It is Mr. Rochester’s ward, I sup- Ingram, like his sisters, is very tall; like them, also, he is handpose—the
little French girl he was speaking of.”
some; but he shares Mary’s apathetic and listless look: he seems
175