Jane Eyre

curtains – looked at once well worn and well saved.
    Mr. St John – sitting as still as one of the dusky pictures on the walls; keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused, and his lips mutely sealed – was easy enough to examine. Had he been a statue instead of a man, he could not have been easier. He was young – perhaps from twenty-eight to thirty – tall, slender; his face riveted the eye; it was like a Greek face, very pure in outline; quite a straight, classic nose; quite an Athenian mouth and chin. It is seldom, indeed, an English face comes so near the antique models as did his. He might well be a little shocked at the irregularity of my lineaments, his own being so harmonious. His eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes; his high forehead, colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks of fair hair.
    This is a gentle delineation, is it not, reader? Yet he whom it describes scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle, a yielding, an impressible, or even of a placid nature. Quiescent as he now sat, there was something about his nostril, his mouth, his brow, which, to my perceptions, indicated elements within either restless, or hard, or eager. He did not speak to me one word nor even direct to me one glance, till his sisters returned. Diana, as she passed in and out, in the course of preparing tea, brought me a little cake, baked on the top of the oven.
    »Eat that now,« she said: »you must be hungry. Hannah says you have had nothing but some gruel since breakfast.«
    I did not refuse it, for my appetite was awakened and keen. Mr. Rivers now closed his book, approached the table, and, as he took a seat, fixed his blue, pictorial-looking eyes full on me. There was an unceremonious directness, a searching, decided steadfastness in his gaze now, which told that intention, and not diffidence, had hitherto kept it averted from the stranger.
    »You are very hungry,« he said.
    »I am, sir.« It is my way – it always was my way, by instinct – ever to meet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness.
    »It is well for you that a low fever has forced you to abstain for the last three days: there would have been danger in yielding to the cravings of your appetite at first. Now you may eat; though still not immoderately.«
    »I trust I shall not eat long at your expense, sir,« was my very clumsily-contrived, unpolished answer.
    »No,« he said, coolly: »when you have indicated to us the residence of your friends, we can write to them, and you may be restored to home.«
    »That, I must plainly tell you is out of my power to do; being absolutely without home and friends.«
    The three looked at me; but not distrustfully; I felt there was no suspicion in their glances: there was more of curiosity. I speak particularly of the young ladies. St John's eyes, though clear enough in a literal sense, in a figurative one were difficult to fathom. He seemed to use them rather as instruments to search other people's thoughts, than as agents to reveal his own: the which combination of keenness and reserve was considerably more calculated to embarrass than to encourage.
    »Do you mean to say,« he asked, »that you are completely isolated from every connection?«
    »I do. Not a tie links me to any living thing: not a claim do I possess to admittance under any roof in England.«
    »A most singular position at your age!«
    Here I saw his glance directed to my hands, which were folded on the table before me. I wondered what he sought there: his words soon explained the quest.
    »You have never been married? You are a spinster?«
    Diana laughed. »Why, she can't be above seventeen or eighteen years old, St John,« said she.
    »I am near nineteen: but I am not married. No.«
    I felt a burning glow mount to my face; for bitter and agitating recollections were awakened by the allusion to marriage. They all saw the embarrassment, and the emotion. Diana and Mary relieved me by turning their eyes elsewhere than to my crimsoned visage; but the colder and sterner brother continued to gaze, till the trouble he had excited forced out tears as well as colour.
    »Where did you last reside?« he now asked.
    »You are too inquisitive, St John,« murmured Mary, in a low voice; but he leaned over the table and required an answer, by a second firm and piercing look.
    »The name of the place where, and of the person with whom I lived, is my secret,« I replied, concisely.
    »Which, if you like, you have, in