"
The evening was spent in the lugubrious mockery of pretending to
consult an old gipsy-woman who smoked a short black pipe, and was
recognised BY ALL as Mr. Rochester in disguise. I was conducted by
Miss Eyre to my bedroom--through a long passage, narrow, low, and
dim, with two rows of small black doors, all shut; 'twas like a
corridor in some Blue Beard's castle. "Hurry, hurry, I hear the
chains rattling," said this strange girl; whose position, my
Eleanor, in this house causes your Catherine some natural
perplexity. When we had reached my chamber, "Be silent, silent as
death," said Miss Eyre, her finger on her lip and her meagre body
convulsed with some mysterious emotion. "Speak not of what you
hear, do not remember what you see!" and she was gone.
I undressed, after testing the walls for secret panels and looking
for assassins in the usual place, but was haunted all the time by
an unnatural sound of laughter. At length, groping my way to the
bed, I jumped hastily in, and would have sought some suspension of
anguish by creeping far underneath the clothes. But even this
refuge was denied to your wretched Catherine! I could not stretch
my limbs; for the sheet, my dear Eleanor, had been so arranged, in
some manner which I do not understand, as to render this
impossible. The laughter seemed to redouble. I heard a footstep
at my door. I hurried on my frock and shawl and crept into the
gallery.
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