Mr. Rochester continued blind the first two years of our union;
perhaps it was that circumstance that drew us so very near--that
knit us so very close: for I was then his vision, as I am still his
right hand. Literally, I was (what he often called me) the apple of
his eye. He saw nature--he saw books through me; and never did I
weary of gazing for his behalf, and of putting into words the effect
of field, tree, town, river, cloud, sunbeam--of the landscape before
us; of the weather round us--and impressing by sound on his ear what
light could no longer stamp on his eye. Never did I weary of
reading to him; never did I weary of conducting him where he wished
to go: of doing for him what he wished to be done. And there was a
pleasure in my services, most full, most exquisite, even though sad-
-because he claimed these services without painful shame or damping
humiliation. He loved me so truly, that he knew no reluctance in
profiting by my attendance: he felt I loved him so fondly, that to
yield that attendance was to indulge my sweetest wishes.
One morning at the end of the two years, as I was writing a letter
to his dictation, he came and bent over me, and said--"Jane, have
you a glittering ornament round your neck?"
I had a gold watch-chain: I answered "Yes."
"And have you a pale blue dress on?"
I had. He informed me then, that for some time he had fancied the
obscurity clouding one eye was becoming less dense; and that now he
was sure of it.
He and I went up to London. He had the advice of an eminent
oculist; and he eventually recovered the sight of that one eye. He
cannot now see very distinctly: he cannot read or write much; but
he can find his way without being led by the hand: the sky is no
longer a blank to him--the earth no longer a void. When his first-
born was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited
his own eyes, as they once were--large, brilliant, and black. On
that occasion, he again, with a full heart, acknowledged that God
had tempered judgment with mercy.
My Edward and I, then, are happy: and the more so, because those we
most love are happy likewise. Diana and Mary Rivers are both
married: alternately, once every year, they come to see us, and we
go to see them. Diana's husband is a captain in the navy, a gallant
officer and a good man. Mary's is a clergyman, a college friend of
her brother's, and, from his attainments and principles, worthy of
the connection. Both Captain Fitzjames and Mr. Wharton love their
wives, and are loved by them.