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1The library looked tranquil enough as I entered it, and the Sibyl--if Sibyl she were--was seated snugly enough in an
2easy-chair at the chimney-corner. She had on a red cloak and a black bonnet: or rather, a broad-brimmed gipsy hat, tied
3down with a striped handkerchief under her chin. An extinguished candle stood on the table; she was bending over the
4fire, and seemed reading in a little black book, like a prayer-book, by the light of the blaze: she muttered the words
5to herself, as most old women do, while she read; she did not desist immediately on my entrance: it appeared she wished
6to finish a paragraph. I stood on the rug and warmed my hands, which were rather cold with sitting at a distance from
7the drawing-room fire. I felt now as composed as ever I did in my life: there was nothing indeed in the gipsy's
8appearance to trouble one's calm. She shut her book and slowly looked up; her hat-brim partially shaded her face, yet I
9could see, as she raised it, that it was a strange one. It looked all brown and black: elf-locks bristled out from
10beneath a white band which passed under her chin, and came half over her cheeks, or rather jaws: her eye confronted me
11at once, with a bold and direct gaze. "Well, and you want your fortune told?" she said, in a voice as decided as her
12glance, as harsh as her features. "I don't care about it, mother; you may please yourself: but I ought to warn you, I
13have no faith." "It's like your impudence to say so: I expected it of you; I heard it in your step as you crossed the
14threshold." "Did you? You've a quick ear." "I have; and a quick eye and a quick brain." "You need them all in your
15trade." "I do; especially when I've customers like you to deal with. Why don't you tremble?" "I'm not cold." "Why don't
16you turn pale?" "I am not sick." "Why don't you consult my art?" "I'm not silly." The old crone "nichered" a laugh under
17her bonnet and bandage; she then drew out a short black pipe, and lighting it began to smoke. Having indulged a while in
18this sedative, she raised her bent body, took the pipe from her lips, and while gazing steadily at the fire, said very
19deliberately-- "You are cold; you are sick; and you are silly." "Prove it," I rejoined. "I will, in few words. You are
20cold, because you are alone: no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick; because the best of
21feelings, the highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps far away from you. You are silly, because, suffer as you may,
22you will not beckon it to approach, nor will you stir one step to meet it where it waits you." She again put her short
23black pipe to her lips, and renewed her smoking with vigour. "You might say all that to almost any one who you knew
24lived as a solitary dependent in a great house." "I might say it to almost any one: but would it be true of almost any
25one?" "In my circumstances." "Yes; just so, in your circumstances: but find me another precisely placed as you are." "It
26would be easy to find you thousands." "You could scarcely find me one. If you knew it, you are peculiarly situated: very
27near happiness; yes, within reach of it. The materials are all prepared; there only wants a movement to combine them.
28Chance laid them somewhat apart; let them be once approached and bliss results." "I don't understand enigmas. I never
29could guess a riddle in my life." "If you wish me to speak more plainly, show me your palm." "And I must cross it with
30silver, I suppose?" "To be sure." I gave her a shilling: she put it into an old stocking-foot which she took out of her
31pocket, and having tied it round and returned it, she told me to hold out my hand. I did. She approached her face to the
32palm, and pored over it without touching it. "It is too fine," said she. "I can make nothing of such a hand as that;
33almost without lines: besides, what is in a palm? Destiny is not written there." "I believe you," said I. "No," she
34continued, "it is in the face: on the forehead, about the eyes, in the lines of the mouth. Kneel, and lift up your
35head." "Ah! now you are coming to reality," I said, as I obeyed her. "I shall begin to put some faith in you presently."
36I knelt within half a yard of her. She stirred the fire, so that a ripple of light broke from the disturbed coal: the
37glare, however, as she sat, only threw her face into deeper shadow: mine, it illumined. "I wonder with what feelings you
38came to me to-night," she said, when she had examined me a while. "I wonder what thoughts are busy in your heart during
39all the hours you sit in yonder room with the fine people flitting before you like shapes in a magic-lantern: just as
40little sympathetic communion passing between you and them as if they were really mere shadows of human forms, and not
41the actual substance." "I feel tired often, sleepy sometimes, but seldom sad." "Then you have some secret hope to buoy
42you up and please you with whispers of the future?" "Not I. The utmost I hope is, to save money enough out of my
43earnings to set up a school some day in a little house rented by myself." "A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on:
44and sitting in that window-seat (you see I know your habits)--" "You have learned them from the servants." "Ah! you
45think yourself sharp. Well, perhaps I have: to speak truth, I have an acquaintance with one of them, Mrs. Poole--" I
46started to my feet when I heard the name. "You have--have you?" thought I; "there is diablerie in the business after
47all, then!" "Don't be alarmed," continued the strange being; "she's a safe hand is Mrs. Poole: close and quiet; any one
48may repose confidence in her. But, as I was saying: sitting in that window-seat, do you think of nothing but your future
49school? Have you no present interest in any of the company who occupy the sofas and chairs before you? Is there not one
50face you study? one figure whose movements you follow with at least curiosity?" "I like to observe all the faces and all
51the figures." "But do you never single one from the rest--or it may be, two?" "I do frequently; when the gestures or
52looks of a pair seem telling a tale: it amuses me to watch them." "What tale do you like best to hear?" "Oh, I have not
53much choice! They generally run on the same theme--courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe--marriage."
54"And do you like that monotonous theme?" "Positively, I don't care about it: it is nothing to me." "Nothing to you? When
55a lady, young and full of life and health, charming with beauty and endowed with the gifts of rank and fortune, sits and
56smiles in the eyes of a gentleman you--" "I what?" "You know--and perhaps think well of." "I don't know the gentlemen
57here. I have scarcely interchanged a syllable with one of them; and as to thinking well of them, I consider some
58respectable, and stately, and middle-aged, and others young, dashing, handsome, and lively: but certainly they are all
59at liberty to be the recipients of whose smiles they please, without my feeling disposed to consider the transaction of
60any moment to me." "You don't know the gentlemen here? You have not exchanged a syllable with one of them? Will you say
61that of the master of the house!" "He is not at home." "A profound remark! A most ingenious quibble! He went to Millcote
62this morning, and will be back here to-night or to-morrow: does that circumstance exclude him from the list of your
63acquaintance--blot him, as it were, out of existence?" "No; but I can scarcely see what Mr. Rochester has to do with the
64theme you had introduced." "I was talking of ladies smiling in the eyes of gentlemen; and of late so many smiles have
65been shed into Mr. Rochester's eyes that they overflow like two cups filled above the brim: have you never remarked
66that?" "Mr. Rochester has a right to enjoy the society of his guests." "No question about his right: but have you never
67observed that, of all the tales told here about matrimony, Mr. Rochester has been favoured with the most lively and the
68most continuous?"
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