The sound of the dressing-bell dispersed the party. It was not till after dinner that I saw him again: he then seemed quite at his ease.

But I liked his physiognomy even less than before: it struck me as being at the same time unsettled and inanimate. His eye wandered，and had no meaning in its wandering: this gave him an odd look，such as I never remembered to have seen. For a handsome and not an unamiable-looking man，he repelled me exceedingly: there was no power in that smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape: no firmness in that aquiline nose and small cherry mouth; there was no thought on the low，even forehead; no mand in that blank，brown eye.

As I sat in my usual nook，and looked at him with the light of the girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him- for he occupied an arm-chair drawn close to the fire and kept shrinking still nearer，as if he were cold- I pared him with Mr. Rochester. I think (with deference be it spoken) the contrast could not be much greater between a sleek gander and a fierce falcon: between a meek sheep and the rough-coated keen-eyed dog，its guardian.

He had spoken of Mr. Rochester as an old friend. A curious friendship theirs must have been: a pointed illustration，indeed，of the old adage that "extremes meet."