ving in such an out-of-the-way place, had the power to aid in my discovery.'
'Oh! I am a clergyman,' he said; 'and the clergy are often appealed to about odd matters.' Again the latch rattled.
'No; that does not satisfy me!' I exclaimed: and indeed there was something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever.
'It is a very strange piece of business,' I added; 'I must know more about it.'
'Another time.'
'No; to-night!- to-night!' and as he turned from the door, I placed myself between it and him. He looked rather embarrassed.
'You certainly shall not go till you have told me all,' I said.
'I would rather not just now.'
'You shall!- you must!'
'I would rather Diana or Mary informed you.'
Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax: gratified it must be, and that without delay; and I told him so.
'But I apprised you that I was a hard man,' said he, 'difficult to persuade.'
'And I am a hard woman,- impossible to put off.'
'And then,' he pursued, 'I am cold: no fervour infects me.'
'Whereas I am hot, and fire dissolves ice. The blaze there has thawed all the snow from your cloak; by the same token, it has streamed on to my floor, and made it like a trampled street. As you hope ever to be forgiven, Mr. Rivers, the high crime and misdemeanour of spoiling a sanded kitchen, tell me what I wish to know.'
'Well, then,' he said, 'I yield; if not to your earnestness, to your perseverance: as stone is worn by continual dropping. Besides, you must know some day,- as well now as later. Your name is Jane Eyre?'
'Of course: that was all settled before.'
'You are not, perhaps, aware that I am your namesake?- that I was christened St. John Eyre Rivers?'
'No, indeed! I remember now seeing the letter E. comprised in your initials written in books you have at different times lent me; but I never asked for what name it stood. But what then? Surely-'
I stopped: I could not trust myself to entertain, much less to exp
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