I rose and looked out of
the window, and heard again, deep and reverberating, Pilot baying I
know not what light minions of the moon. The Great Bear wheeled
faintly clear in the dark zenith, but the borders of the east were
grey as glass; and far away a fierce hound was answering from his
echo-place in the gloom, as if the dread dog of Acheron kept post upon
the hills.
A light tap woke me in the sunlight, and a lighter voice. Mr.
Rochester took breakfast with us in a gloomy old dressing-room, moody
and taciturn, unpacified by sleep. But Jane, whimsical and deft, had
tied a yellow ribbon in the darkness of her hair.
Rosinante awaited me at the little green gate, eyeing forlornly the
steep valley at her feet. And I rode on. The gate was shut on me; and
Mr. Rochester again, perhaps, at his black ease.
I had jogged on, with that peculiar gravity age brings to equine
hoofs, about a mile, when the buttress of a thick wall came into view
abutting on the lane, and perched thereon what at first I deemed a
coloured figment of the mist that festooned the branches and clung
along the turf.
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