'What has happened?'- 'Fetch a light!'- 'Is it fire?'- 'Are there robbers?'- 'Where shall we run?' was demanded confusedly on all hands. But for the moon-light they would have been in complete darkness. They ran to and fro; they crowded together: some sobbed, some stumbled: the confusion was inextricable.
'Where the devil is Rochester?' cried Colonel Dent. 'I cannot find him in his bed.'
'Here! here!' was shouted in return. 'Be composed, all of you:
I'm coming.'
And the door at the end of the gallery opened, and Mr. Rochester advanced with a candle: he had just descended from the upper storey.
One of the ladies ran to him directly; she seized his arm: it was Miss Ingram.
'What awful event has taken place?' said she. 'Speak! let us know the worst at once!'
'But don't pull me down or strangle me,' he replied: for the Misses Eshton were clinging about him now; and the two dowagers, in vast white wrappers, were bearing down on him like ships in full sail.
'All's right!- all's right!' he cried. 'It's a mere rehearsal of Much Ado about Nothing. Ladies, keep off, or I shall wax dangerous.'
And dangerous he looked: his black eyes darted sparks. Calming himself by an effort, he added-
'A servant has had the nightmare; that is all. She's an excitable, nervous person: she construed her dream into an apparition, or something of that sort, no doubt; and has taken a fit with fright. Now, then, I must see you all back into your rooms; for, till the house is settled, she cannot be looked after. Gentlemen, have the goodness to set the ladies the example. Miss Ingram, I am sure you will not fail in evincing superiority to idle terrors. Amy and Louisa, return to your nests like a pair of doves, as you are. Mesdames' (to the dowagers), 'you will take cold to a dead certainty, if you stay in this chill gallery any longer.'
And so, by dint of alternate coaxing and commanding, he contrived to get them all once more enclosed in their separate dormitories. I did not wait to be ordered back
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