CHAPTER XVI 201
" No : I am too thirsty to eat . Will you let me have another cup ?"
I was about again to revert to the probability of a union between Mr . Rochester and the beautiful Blanche ; but Adele came in , and the conversation was turned into another channel .
When once more alone , I reviewed the information I had got ; looked into my heart , examined its thoughts and feelings , and endeavoured to bring back with a strict hand such as had been straying through imagination ' s boundless and trackless waste , into the safe fold of common sense .
Arraigned at my own bar , Memory having given her evidence of the hopes , wishes , sentiments I had been cherishing since last night -- of the general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight past ; Reason having come forward and told , in her own quiet way a plain , unvarnished tale , showing how I had rejected the real , and rabidly devoured the ideal ; -- I pronounced judgment to this effect : -
That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life ; that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies , and swallowed poison as if it were nectar .
" YOU ," I said , " a favourite with Mr . Rochester ? YOU gifted with the power of pleasing him ? YOU of importance to him in any way ? Go ! your folly sickens me . And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens of preference -- equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man of the world to a dependent and a novice . How dared you ? Poor stupid dupe ! -- Could not even self-interest make you wiser ? You repeated to yourself this morning the brief scene of last night ? -- Cover your face and be ashamed ! He said something in praise of your eyes , did he ? Blind puppy ! Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed senselessness ! It does good to no woman to be flattered by her superior , who cannot possibly intend to marry her ; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them , which , if unreturned and unknown , must devour the life that feeds it ; and , if discovered and responded to , must lead , ignis-fatus-like , into miry wilds whence there is no extrication .