“‘Darling, I will never leave you!’ cried her happy lover, and caught her half reluctant in his arms, and set love’s sweet seal upon his vow.
“A diviner beauty shone from the girl’s fair face; a tenderer light beamed from her sunny eyes.
“‘Dearest!’ she whispered,—the magic of her voice unlocked the gates of sense, filled the air with visions of beauty, and called over the laughing waves the music of heavenly choirs,—‘Dearest, tell me again that you love me.’ She sank upon her lover’s breast transfigured.
“‘Dearest!’ she again whispered, ‘will you love me always as now?’
“‘Always, darling, always! Would that now were forever? Nay, love, I would give my hope of immortal life to win this moment of delight!’
“‘Hush! hush!’ the girl clung closer to her lover.
“‘Not such love, but that you will always be noble and true, and—and will love no one else so well.’”
In Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece, Jane Eyre returns to Thornfield after the long separation enforced by a painful adventure. She learns, upon revisiting the old familiar scenes, of the destruction of Thornfield Hall by fire, and of the violent death of the maniac wife. She finds that the lonely and sightless Rochester is an occupant of Ferndean manor-house, and she glides quietly into his parlor unannounced:
“‘This is you, Mary, is it not?’