CHAPTER XXII 306
quiet and unmolested . I shall devote myself for a time to the examination of the Roman Catholic dogmas , and to a careful study of the workings of their system : if I find it to be , as I half suspect it is , the one best calculated to ensure the doing of all things decently and in order , I shall embrace the tenets of Rome and probably take the veil ."
I neither expressed surprise at this resolution nor attempted to dissuade her from it . " The vocation will fit you to a hair ," I thought : " much good may it do you !"
When we parted , she said : " Good-bye , cousin Jane Eyre ; I wish you well : you have some sense ."
I then returned : " You are not without sense , cousin Eliza ; but what you have , I suppose , in another year will be walled up alive in a French convent . However , it is not my business , and so it suits you , I don ' t much care ."
" You are in the right ," said she ; and with these words we each went our separate way . As I shall not have occasion to refer either to her or her sister again , I may as well mention here , that Georgiana made an advantageous match with a wealthy worn-out man of fashion , and that Eliza actually took the veil , and is at this day superior of the convent where she passed the period of her novitiate , and which she endowed with her fortune .
How people feel when they are returning home from an absence , long or short , I did not know : I had never experienced the sensation . I had known what it was to come back to Gateshead when a child after a long walk , to be scolded for looking cold or gloomy ; and later , what it was to come back from church to Lowood , to long for a plenteous meal and a good fire , and to be unable to get either . Neither of these returnings was very pleasant or desirable : no magnet drew me to a given point , increasing in its strength of attraction the nearer I came . The return to Thornfield was yet to be tried .
My journey seemed tedious -- very tedious : fifty miles one day , a night spent at an inn ; fifty miles the next day . During the first twelve hours I