; »I have plenty of faults of my own: I
know it, and I don't wish to palliate them, I assure you. God wot I need not be
too severe about others; I have a past existence, a series of deeds, a colour of
life to contemplate within my own breast, which might well call my sneers and
censures from my neighbours to myself. I started, or rather (for like other
defaulters, I like to lay half the blame on ill fortune and adverse
circumstances) was thrust on to a wrong tack at the age of one and twenty, and
have never recovered the right course since: but I might have been very
different; I might have been as good as you, - wiser, - almost as stainless. I
envy you your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory.
Little girl, a memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite
treasure, - an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment: is it not?«
    »How was your memory when you were eighteen, sir?«
    »All right then; limpid, salubrious: no gush of bilge water had turned it to
fetid puddle. I was your equal at eighteen - quite your equal. Nature meant me
to be, on the whole, a good man. Miss Eyre: one of the better end; and you see I
am not so. You would say you don't see it: at least I flatter myself I read as
much in your eye (beware, by-the-by, what you express with that organ, I am
quick at interpreting its language). Then take my word for it, - I am not a
villain: you are not to suppose that - not to attribute to me any such bad
eminence; but, owing, I verily believe, rather to circumstances than to my
natural bent, I am a trite common-place sinner, hackneyed in all the poor petty
dissipations with which the rich and worthless try to put on life. Do you wonder
that I avow this to you? Know, that in the course of your future life you will
often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances'
secrets: people will instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your
forte to talk of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they
will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion,
but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less comforting and encouraging
because it is very unobtrusive in its manifestations.«