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And was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No, reader: gratitude, and many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object I best liked to see; his presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire.

Yet I had not forgotten his faults; indeed, I could not, for he brought them frequently before me.

He was proud, sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every description: in my secret soul I knew that his great kindness to me was balanced by unjust severity to many others.

He was moody, too; unaccountably so; I more than once, when sent for to read to him, found him sitting in his library alone, with his head bent on his folded arms; and, when he looked up, a morose, almost a malignant, scowl blackened his features.

But I believed that his moodiness, his harshness, and his former faults of morality (I say former, for now he seemed corrected of them) had their source in some cruel cross of fate.

I believed he was naturally a man of better tendencies, higher principles, and purer tastes than such as circumstances had developed, education instilled, or destiny encouraged.

I thought there were excellent materials in him; though for the present they hung together somewhat spoiled and tangled.

I cannot deny that I grieved for his grief, whatever that was, and would have given much to assuage it.

Though I had now extinguished my candle and was laid down in bed, I could not sleep for thinking of his look when he paused in the avenue, and told how his destiny had risen up before him, and dared him to be happy at Thornfield.

"Why not?" I asked myself.

"What alienates him from the house? Will he leave it again soon? Mrs. Fairfax said he seldom stayed here longer than a fortnight at a time; and he has now been resident eight weeks.

If he does go, the change will be doleful.

Suppose he should be absent spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will seem!"

I hardly know whether I had slept or not after this musing; at any rate, I started wide awake on hearing a vague murmur, peculiar and lugubrious, which sounded, I thought, just above me.

I wished I had kept my candle burning: the night was drearily dark; my spirits were depressed.

I rose and sat up in bed, listening.

The sound was hushed.

I tried again to sleep; but my heart beat anxiously: my inward tranquillity was broken.

The clock, far down in the hall, struck two.

Just then it seemed my chamber-door was touched; as if fingers had swept the panels in groping a way along the dark gallery outside.

I said, "Who is there?" Nothing answered.

I was chilled with fear.

All at once I remembered that it might be Pilot, who, when the kitchen-door chanced to be left open, not unfrequently found his way up to the threshold of Mr. Rochester's chamber: I had seen him lying there myself in the mornings.

The idea calmed me somewhat: I lay down.

Silence composes the nerves; and as an unbroken hush now reigned again through the whole house, I began to feel the return of slumber.

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