Chapter 13

Chapter 13 MR ROCHESTER, it seems, by the surgeon's orders, went to bed early that night; nor did he rise soon next morning. When he did come down, it was to attend to business. His agent and some of his tenants were arrived, and waiting to speak with him. Adele and I had now to vacate the library: it would be in daily requisition as a reception-room for callers. A fire was lit in an apartment upstairs, and there I carried our books, and arranged it for the future schoolroom. I discerned in the course of the morning that Thornfield Hall was a changed place. No longer silent as a church, it echoed every hour or two to a knock at the door or a clang of the bell. Steps, too, often traversed the hall, and new voices spoke in different keys below. A rill from the outer world was flowing through it. It had a master; for my part, I liked it better. Adele was not easy to teach that day; she could not apply. She kept running to the door and looking over the banisters to see if she could get a glimpse of Mr Rochester. Then she coined pretexts to go downstairs, in order, as I shrewdly suspected, to visit the library, where I knew she was not wanted. Then, when I got a little angry, and made her sit still, she continued to talk incessantly of her 'ami Monsieur Edouard Fairfax de Rochester', as she dubbed him (I had not before heard his prenomens), and to conjecture what presents he had brought her; for it appears that he had intimated the night before that, when his luggage came from Millcote, there would be found amongst it a little box in whose contents she had an interest. 'Et cela do it signifier, ' said she, 'qu'il y aura la-dedans un cadeau pour moi, et peut...