 quivered keen in his proud
heart - have called love into his stern eye, and softness into his sardonic
face: or, better still, without weapons a silent conquest might have been won.
    »Why can she not influence him more, when she is privileged to draw so near
to him?« I asked myself. »Surely she cannot truly like him; or not like him with
true affection! If she did, she need not coin her smiles so lavishly; flash her
glances so unremittingly; manufacture airs so elaborate, graces so
multitudinous. It seems to me, that she might, by merely sitting quietly at his
side, saying little and looking less, get nigher his heart. I have seen in his
face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so
vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by
meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it - to
answer what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without
grimace - and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed one like
a fostering sunbeam. How will she manage to please him when they are married? I
do not think she will manage it; and yet it might be managed; and his wife
might, I verily believe, be the very happiest woman the sun shines on.«
    I have not yet said anything condemnatory of Mr. Rochester's project of
marrying for interest and connexions. It surprised me when I first discovered
that such was his intention: I had thought him a man unlikely to be influenced
by motives so common-place in his choice of a wife; but the longer I considered
the position, education, etc. of the parties, the less I felt justified in
judging and blaming either him or Miss Ingram, for acting in conformity to ideas
and principles instilled into them, doubtless, from their childhood. All their
class held these principles: I supposed, then, they had reasons for holding them
such as I could not fathom. It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I
would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the very
obviousness of the advantages to the husband's own happiness, offered by this
plan, convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption of
which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I
wished to act.
    But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very lenient to my
master: I was forgetting
