CHAPTER XVIII 238
shape : no firmness in that aquiline nose and small cherry mouth ; there was no thought on the low , even forehead ; no command in that blank , brown eye .
As I sat in my usual nook , and looked at him with the light of the girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him -- for he occupied an arm-chair drawn close to the fire , and kept shrinking still nearer , as if he were cold , I compared him with Mr . Rochester . I think ( with deference be it spoken ) the contrast could not be much greater between a sleek gander and a fierce falcon : between a meek sheep and the rough-coated keen-eyed dog , its guardian .
He had spoken of Mr . Rochester as an old friend . A curious friendship theirs must have been : a pointed illustration , indeed , of the old adage that " extremes meet ."
Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him , and I caught at times scraps of their conversation across the room . At first I could not make much sense of what I heard ; for the discourse of Louisa Eshton and Mary Ingram , who sat nearer to me , confused the fragmentary sentences that reached me at intervals . These last were discussing the stranger ; they both called him " a beautiful man ." Louisa said he was " a love of a creature ," and she " adored him ;" and Mary instanced his " pretty little mouth , and nice nose ," as her ideal of the charming .
" And what a sweet-tempered forehead he has !" cried Louisa , -- " so smooth -- none of those frowning irregularities I dislike so much ; and such a placid eye and smile !"
And then , to my great relief , Mr . Henry Lynn summoned them to the other side of the room , to settle some point about the deferred excursion to Hay Common .
I was now able to concentrate my attention on the group by the fire , and I presently gathered that the new-comer was called Mr . Mason ; then I learned that he was but just arrived in England , and that he came from some