A week passes with no word from Mr Rochester, then ten days. Mrs Fairfax says he may go from the Leas to London and on to the Continent and not show his face at Thornfield for a year. Jane feels a chill and a sickening disappointment, then calls her feelings to order. She has nothing to do with the master beyond her salary. She must keep to her caste. She must not make him the object of feelings he would despise. She frames advertisements for a new post in her head and does not send them. The correction holds only until the next quiet hour. The lecture is stern because the feeling is already far stronger than her wage.
After more than a fortnight a letter arrives. Rochester will return on Thursday with a party from the Leas. Thornfield is turned inside out: custards, plate, flowers, carpets, bed-hangings, the clock and the banisters polished like glass. Jane helps and keeps watching the third storey. Servants' talk confirms that Grace Poole is paid unusually high wages and that Jane is shut out of the reason. She has gathered only this: there is a mystery in the house, and she is not meant to share it.
Thursday comes with the rooms already finished. From an upper window Jane sees Rochester gallop up on Mesrour, Pilot ahead, and a lady at his side in a purple riding-habit, her veil and raven ringlets streaming. Mrs Fairfax names her: Miss Ingram. Carriages follow. Jane keeps Adèle on her knee and forbids her to go down unless she is sent for. The child cries, then agrees. Below, the master's voice welcomes the guests. Doors open and shut. Adèle listens and says they are changing their clothes.
That evening Jane and Adèle sit on the stair and hear a lady sing, then a duet, then the clock strike eleven. Jane's ear is busy sorting Rochester's voice out of the noise. Later she is ordered to bring Adèle into the drawing room after dinner. She takes the shade behind the window curtain and works at her netting while the company gathers. She reads the room by clothes and faces: Lady Lynn in satin and an azure plume, Mrs Colonel Dent quieter in black satin and pearls, the Dowager Lady Ingram with her daughters Blanche and Mary, the tallest figures there. Rochester enters last. Jane tries to keep her eyes on the work. At the first renewed sight of him the love she had tried to root out comes back green and strong. He has not looked at her. The handsome guests look empty beside his grim mouth and dark brow. She had spent the quiet weeks trying to extirpate that germ. The first sight undoes the work. She sets him beside the gallant Lynns, the languid Lord Ingram, and the military polish of the other men. Rule would not call Rochester beautiful. Interest masters her anyway. Blanche is the beauty the room was built to admire: tall, dark, dressed to be looked at, sure of her place at the mantel. Jane, in her usual quiet dress, is the person the ladies discuss as a type. When Blanche boasts of hoisting a governess and a tutor out of the house because a glance looked like passion, the joke lands on the woman behind the curtain. Lady Ingram does not lower her voice. Jane hears her own class named as a fault.
Blanche takes the place opposite him at the mantelpiece and draws him into talk about Adèle and about governesses. The ladies call governesses detestable, ridiculous burdens. Lady Ingram notices the figure behind the curtain and says Jane has the faults of her class. Blanche tells how she and her brother Theodore tormented their own governesses until a suspected liking between a governess and a tutor gave them a lever to drive the pair out. Blanche sings. Rochester joins her. Jane stays until the last vibration dies, then leaves by a side door.
In the hall she kneels to retie a loose sandal and meets him face to face. He asks why she did not speak to him in the room. She says she did not wish to disturb him. He asks what she did in his absence, whether she took cold the night she half drowned him, and why she is paler. She denies any hurt. He says a few more words would bring tears, and that a bead has already fallen on the flag. If no servant were likely to pass, he would know what it means. Tonight she may go. For as long as the visitors stay she must appear in the drawing room every evening. He tells her to send Sophie for Adèle. He begins, Good-night, my, stops, bites his lip, and leaves her there.
