"No，ma"am- oh，no! No one is living there. I suppose you are a stranger in these parts，or you would have heard what happened last autumn,- Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down just about harvest-time. A dreadful calamity! such an immense quantity of valuable property destroyed: hardly any of the furniture could be saved. The fire broke out at dead of night，and before the engines arrived from Millcote，the building was one mass of flame. It was a terrible spectacle: I witnessed it myself."

"At dead of night!" I muttered. Yes，that was ever the hour of fatality at Thornfield. "Was it known how it originated?" I demanded.

"They guessed，ma"am: they guessed. Indeed，I should say it was ascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware," he continued，edging his chair a little nearer the table，and speaking low，"that there was a lady- a- a lunatic，kept in the house?"

"I have heard something of it."

"She was kept in very close confinement，ma"am; people even for some years was not absolutely certain of her existence. No one saw her: they only knew by rumour that such a person was at the Hall;

and who or what she was it was difficult to conjecture. They said Mr. Edward had brought her from abroad，and some believed she had been his mistress. But a queer thing happened a year since- a very queer thing."

I feared now to hear my own story. I endeavoured to recall him to the main fact.

"And this lady?"