CHAPTER X 105
together with a great delight in pleasing my teachers , especially such as I loved , urged me on : I availed myself fully of the advantages offered me . In time I rose to be the first girl of the first class ; then I was invested with the office of teacher ; which I discharged with zeal for two years : but at the end of that time I altered .
Miss Temple , through all changes , had thus far continued superintendent of the seminary : to her instruction I owed the best part of my acquirements ; her friendship and society had been my continual solace ; she had stood me in the stead of mother , governess , and , latterly , companion . At this period she married , removed with her husband ( a clergyman , an excellent man , almost worthy of such a wife ) to a distant county , and consequently was lost to me .
From the day she left I was no longer the same : with her was gone every settled feeling , every association that had made Lowood in some degree a home to me . I had imbibed from her something of her nature and much of her habits : more harmonious thoughts : what seemed better regulated feelings had become the inmates of my mind . I had given in allegiance to duty and order ; I was quiet ; I believed I was content : to the eyes of others , usually even to my own , I appeared a disciplined and subdued character .
But destiny , in the shape of the Rev . Mr . Nasmyth , came between me and Miss Temple : I saw her in her travelling dress step into a post-chaise , shortly after the marriage ceremony ; I watched the chaise mount the hill and disappear beyond its brow ; and then retired to my own room , and there spent in solitude the greatest part of the half-holiday granted in honour of the occasion .
I walked about the chamber most of the time . I imagined myself only to be regretting my loss , and thinking how to repair it ; but when my reflections were concluded , and I looked up and found that the afternoon was gone , and evening far advanced , another discovery dawned on me , namely , that in the interval I had undergone a transforming process ; that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss Temple -- or rather that she had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had been breathing in her vicinity -- and that