After Mr. Brocklehurst's public condemnation, Jane sinks to the floor of the empty schoolroom and weeps, certain her hard-won progress at Lowood is undone. Helen Burns finds her there with bread and coffee and argues that the eighty witnesses to her shaming are not the world: if Jane's own conscience absolves her, she is not without friends. Helen widens the lens to an invisible kingdom of spirits and a God who weighs the truth of every heart, then coughs, and Jane briefly forgets her own grief in worry for her friend.
Miss Temple appears, summons both girls to her warm apartment, and invites Jane to defend herself as a criminal is allowed to do. Jane tells her full Gateshead story with unusual restraint, leaving out the gall and wormwood, and Miss Temple promises to write to Mr. Lloyd while telling Jane that to her she is already clear. When the housekeeper sends only enough toast for one, Miss Temple unlocks a drawer and produces a seed-cake, and the three feast. Over tea, Helen blooms into brilliant conversation about French authors, books, and the Latin her father taught her, even construing a page of Virgil aloud while Jane watches in wonder.
The next morning Miss Scatcherd, who has been searching drawers, pins a 'Slattern' placard on Helen's forehead; Helen wears it without complaint, but the moment Miss Scatcherd withdraws Jane tears it off and thrusts it into the fire. About a week later Mr. Lloyd's reply arrives and Miss Temple announces to the assembled school that Jane is completely cleared of every imputation. Jane sets to work afresh, is soon promoted to a higher class, begins French and drawing, and falls asleep that night picturing the drawings she will one day make. She would not now exchange Lowood, with all its privations, for Gateshead and its daily luxuries.
Coming Up in Chapter 9
Spring softens Lowood. The frost leaves, Jane's feet heal, and the girls walk among snowdrops and crocuses. The relief does not last. Typhus enters the school, and Helen Burns grows too ill to stay among the others.
