The Master's Return — Jane Eyre

Chapter 13 opens the morning after Rochester's return, and Thornfield is unrecognisable. Where the hall had been silent as a church, bells now clang, footsteps cross the floor, and tenants and the estate agent fill the rooms. Jane vacates the library and arranges a schoolroom upstairs. Adèle is too distracted to learn, running to the banister and chattering about the cadeau her 'ami, Monsieur Edouard Fairfax de Rochester' has promised. Jane notes that Thornfield now has a master, and finds she prefers it that way.

At six, Mrs. Fairfax tells Jane that Rochester wishes to take tea with her and Adèle, and insists she change into her black silk dress and pin on the single pearl brooch Miss Temple gave her at parting. In the drawing-room he barely lifts his head, half reclined on a couch with his sprained foot on a cushion. His forced stiff bow and gruff 'Let Miss Eyre be seated' liberate Jane from the obligation to be charming. When Adèle asks whether Mademoiselle has a present too, he turns his dark, piercing eyes on Jane and quizzes her about gifts; she answers thoughtfully rather than flattering him.

After tea the questioning becomes an interview. Rochester learns that Jane spent eight years at Lowood, has no parents, no siblings, and no kinsfolk, and that she answered Mrs. Fairfax's advertisement herself. He jokes about her 'men in green' look from their meeting on Hay Lane, draws out her low opinion of Brocklehurst, and works out by arithmetic that she is eighteen. He orders her into the library to play the piano, then calls 'Enough!' after a few minutes and pronounces her playing 'like any other English school-girl.'

The real climax comes when he demands her portfolio. He scrutinises each sketch, sweeps most aside, and keeps three watercolours: a cormorant on a half-submerged mast clutching a gold bracelet over a drowned arm; a woman's shape rising into the twilight sky as the Evening Star; and a colossal veiled head resting against an iceberg under a crown of white flame. He recognises the setting as Latmos, calls her thoughts 'elfish,' and asks where she could have seen such eyes. Then, abruptly noting the hour, he sends Adèle to bed and dismisses them with a frigid bow. Afterwards Mrs. Fairfax tells Jane the little she knows of his trials: an elder brother, Rowland, and old Mr. Rochester combined to force Edward into a 'painful position' for the sake of his fortune; he never forgave it, broke with his family, and has shunned Thornfield ever since his brother's death left him master of the estate.