Page:Jane Eyre (1st edition), Volume 3.djvu/295

Rh had endured, he was certain, more than I had confessed to him.

"Well, whatever my sufferings had been they were very short," I answered: and then I proceeded to tell him how I had been received at Moor-House; how I had obtained the office of school-mistress, &c. The accession of fortune, the discovery of my relations, followed in due order. Of course, St. John Rivers' name came in frequently in the progress of my tale. When I had done, that name was immediately taken up.

"This St. John, then, is your cousin?"

"Yes."

"You have spoken of him often: did you like him?"

"He was a very good man, sir; I could not help liking him."

"A good man? Does that mean a respectable, well-conducted man of fifty? Or what does it mean?"

"St. John was only twenty-nine, sir."

"Jeune encore," as the French say. "Is he a person of low stature, phlegmatic, and plain? A person whose goodness consists rather in his guiltlessness of vice, than in his prowess in virtue?"