《简·爱：自传》

He invited me into the adjacent orchard to escape the house’s suffocating air, picked me a half-blown rose from the first bush, and teased me about being afraid left alone with Mason. Alluding to the hidden danger that lurked in Thornfield’s walls, he said his life felt like standing on a volcano crust that could crack and spew fire at any moment, then posed a hypothetical moral question: if a man who had made a grave, life-ruining error in his youth, one that tainted all his existence, found a good, pure woman who could restore his soul, would he be justified in breaking a mere social custom to bind himself to her forever? I answered that a sinner’s reformation should never rest on a fellow creature, that he should look higher for strength. He started to say he had found his “instrument” for reform, then cut himself off, laughing sarcastically, and teased me about his rumored affection for the buxom, haughty Miss Ingram, asking me to sit up with him the night before his wedding to listen to him talk about his bride. I agreed, and he left me, telling the household Mason had departed before sunrise.

For a week prior, I had been haunted by recurring dreams of an infant, a warning Bessie Leaven had given me as a child: dreams of children foretold family trouble. The premonition proved true when Robert Leaven, the Reed family’s old coachman, arrived at Thornfield in deep mourning, bearing news that my cousin John Reed had died by suicide after squandering his health and fortune, and the shock had caused his mother, Mrs. Reed, to suffer a stroke, repeatedly calling for Jane in her delirium. I asked Rochester for two weeks of leave, and after a tense exchange where he teased me about traveling a hundred miles alone, offered me fair wages, and arranged for Adèle to be sent to school and a new governess position to be found for me when I returned, he agreed to my departure. Our farewell was stiff and formal, and I left early the next morning before Rochester was up, traveling back to Gateshead.