All of my hopes and dreams are dashed.
I shall never be mistress of Thornfield.
How did this come to be, you ask?
I will tell you.
He was called away to Millcotte on some business a few days ago, leaving the house in a sort of quiet slumber. Mama and Colonel Dent played cards. Mary took to her needlework. The Governess moped around the house like a ghost.
Bored and restless without him there, one afternoon, I picked up a novel under the guise of reading, but my mind could not make sense of the words on the page. So many thoughts flowed behind my eyes I could barely keep them open.
After a few hours of tedious calm (during which, I must confess, I grew interested in the book I read) the little girl exclaimed that He had returned and was riding up to the estate now.
She was wrong, of course, and I was disappointed.
The rider was a Mr. Mason, who said he knew of our Host. He was a handsome man, and had apparently known our Host for some years. He spoke of Kingston, Jamaica, and the West Indies, and I gathered he had traveled far in his lifetime.
In the middle of all this hubub, the footman rushed into the room to tell Mr. Eshton of a troublesome old woman who was at the door. Mama was aghast, and wanted her to leave, but Colonel Dent had other plans. The footman told us she was ugly, and old, and demanded to tell our fortunes.
Not wanting to appear afeared, and frankly out of boredom, I rose to the occasion and offered to go first.
(Later, Mary would say I demanded to go first, but she's a silly mouse.)
I was taken into the library - where the strange old woman had insisted she be seen - and there I met her.
She was, indeed, ugly. She hunched over as if her backbone was shaped like a cursive letter "C" and had straggly hair of indistinguishable color.
When she began to tell me of my future, I knew all was lost.
Oh, readers, how I begin to explain my grief?!
I cannot even think of her words as I write this. After my minutes with her were done I returned to the drawing-room, put on my bravest face, and played at returning to my reading.
In reality, my heart was hurt and disappointed.
And I hated The Governess, who was watching me all the while. She, unlike anyone else assembled, knew what I had been told was not what I had planned on hearing.
It is winter now, and I look back on the happiness that spring brought with it, wrapped in the arms of the potential of new love and new wealth.
