The Mystery of Grace Poole — Jane Eyre

The morning after the fire Jane both wishes and fears to see Rochester. The household buzzes with the official story: master fell asleep with a candle lit and quenched the flames himself. In his chamber Jane finds Grace Poole calmly sewing new curtain rings, showing no guilt, no fear, no start when Jane enters. Jane probes her. Grace gives the candle story without flinching, then asks whether Jane, being young and a light sleeper, heard anything. Jane mentions the laugh. Grace says she must have been dreaming, and cross-examines Jane about whether she told master, whether she opened her door, whether she bolts it every night. Jane realises Grace is mapping her habits and replies that she will take good care to make all secure before she lies down.

At dinner Jane can hardly hear Mrs. Fairfax; she puzzles over why Rochester charged Grace with attempted murder last night yet protects her now, and why he enjoined secrecy. She rejects the idea that tender feelings explain it, then catches herself remembering Rochester's look and voice from the night before. Adèle notices her fingers trembling. At tea Mrs. Fairfax mentions casually that Rochester set off after breakfast for the Leas, ten miles away, where Lord Ingram, Sir George Lynn, and others are assembled. He is unlikely to return for a week. Mrs. Fairfax describes the Christmas ball when Blanche Ingram was the belle of the evening: tall, olive complexion, raven curls, white dress, amber scarf, sang a duet with Mr. Rochester. Jane asks whether a wealthy gentleman might take a fancy to her. Mrs. Fairfax says Mr. Rochester is nearly forty and she is but twenty-five.

Alone again, Jane arraigns herself at her own bar. Memory gives evidence of the hopes she has cherished since last night. Reason tells a plain tale of how she has rejected the real and devoured the ideal. She pronounces sentence: that a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life; that she, a dependent novice, has let equivocal tokens from a gentleman of family kindle a secret love. She orders herself to draw her own portrait in chalk, labelled Portrait of a Governess, disconnected, poor, and plain, and beside it an ivory miniature of the loveliest face she can imagine from Mrs. Fairfax's description of Blanche Ingram. Whenever she chances to fancy Rochester thinks well of her, she is to compare the two and ask whether he would waste a serious thought on this insignificant plebeian. She keeps her word, completes both portraits in less than a fortnight, and finds the contrast as great as self-control could desire.