The Mysterious Call — Jane Eyre

At dawn Jane finds St. John's note under her door, urging prayer against temptation. She answers inwardly that she will search until certainty comes, then tells Diana and Mary she must travel alone four days on a friend's account. From Whitcross she rides toward Thornfield with money and purpose, feeling like a messenger-pigeon flying home.

At the Rochester Arms she cannot bring herself to ask after him and walks the familiar fields instead. She peeps at the Hall like a lover at a sleeping mistress, then finds not warmth but a blackened ruin: Thornfield burned, paneless and roofless. At the inn the late butler tells the story: Bertha set the fire on the night that matched Jane's wedding-hour fatality; she leaped from the battlements and died. Rochester saved the servants, was blinded and maimed in the collapse, and now lives broken at Ferndean.

Jane had dreaded worse than blindness; learning he is alive, she pays double hire for a chaise to reach him before dark.