CHAPTER XV 183
train it ; but now you know that it is the illegitimate offspring of a French opera- girl , you will perhaps think differently of your post and protegee : you will be coming to me some day with notice that you have found another place -- that you beg me to look out for a new governess , & c . -- Eh ?"
" No : Adele is not answerable for either her mother ' s faults or yours : I have a regard for her ; and now that I know she is , in a sense , parentless -- forsaken by her mother and disowned by you , sir -- I shall cling closer to her than before . How could I possibly prefer the spoilt pet of a wealthy family , who would hate her governess as a nuisance , to a lonely little orphan , who leans towards her as a friend ?"
" Oh , that is the light in which you view it ! Well , I must go in now ; and you too : it darkens ."
But I stayed out a few minutes longer with Adele and Pilot -- ran a race with her , and played a game of battledore and shuttlecock . When we went in , and I had removed her bonnet and coat , I took her on my knee ; kept her there an hour , allowing her to prattle as she liked : not rebuking even some little freedoms and trivialities into which she was apt to stray when much noticed , and which betrayed in her a superficiality of character , inherited probably from her mother , hardly congenial to an English mind . Still she had her merits ; and I was disposed to appreciate all that was good in her to the utmost . I sought in her countenance and features a likeness to Mr . Rochester , but found none : no trait , no turn of expression announced relationship . It was a pity : if she could but have been proved to resemble him , he would have thought more of her .
It was not till after I had withdrawn to my own chamber for the night , that I steadily reviewed the tale Mr . Rochester had told me . As he had said , there was probably nothing at all extraordinary in the substance of the narrative itself : a wealthy Englishman ' s passion for a French dancer , and her treachery to him , were everyday matters enough , no doubt , in society ; but there was something decidedly strange in the paroxysm of emotion which had suddenly seized him when he was in the act of expressing the present