"And this is Jane Eyre? Are you ing from Millcote，and on foot? Yes- just one of your tricks: not to send for a carriage，and e clattering over street and road like a mon mortal，but to steal into the vicinage of your home along with twilight，just as if you were a dream or a shade. What the deuce have you done with yourself this last month?"

"I have been with my aunt，sir，who is dead."

"A true Janian reply! Good angels be my guard. She es from the other world- from the abode of people who are dead; and tells me so when she meets me alone here in the gloaming! If I dared，I"d touch you，to see if you are substance or shadow，you elf!- but I"d as soon offer to take hold of a blue ignis fatuus light in a marsh.

Truant! truant!" he added，when he had paused an instant. "Absent from me a whole month，and forgetting me quite，I"ll be sworn!"

I knew there would be pleasure in meeting my master again，even though broken by the fear that he was so soon to cease to be my master，and by the knowledge that I was nothing to him: but there was ever in Mr. Rochester (so at least I thought) such a wealth of the power of municating happiness，that to taste but of the crumbs he scattered to stray and stranger birds like me，was to feast genially. His last words were balm: they seemed to imply that it imported something to him whether I forgot him or not. And he had spoken of Thornfield as my home- would that it were my home!

He did not leave the stile，and I hardly liked to ask to go by. I inquired soon if he had not been to London.