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form what new tie you like . That woman , who has so abused your long-suffering , so sullied your name , so outraged your honour , so blighted your youth , is not your wife , nor are you her husband . See that she is cared for as her condition demands , and you have done all that God and humanity require of you . Let her identity , her connection with yourself , be buried in oblivion : you are bound to impart them to no living being . Place her in safety and comfort : shelter her degradation with secrecy , and leave her .'
" I acted precisely on this suggestion . My father and brother had not made my marriage known to their acquaintance ; because , in the very first letter I wrote to apprise them of the union -- having already begun to experience extreme disgust of its consequences , and , from the family character and constitution , seeing a hideous future opening to me -- I added an urgent charge to keep it secret : and very soon the infamous conduct of the wife my father had selected for me was such as to make him blush to own her as his daughter-in-law . Far from desiring to publish the connection , he became as anxious to conceal it as myself .
" To England , then , I conveyed her ; a fearful voyage I had with such a monster in the vessel . Glad was I when I at last got her to Thornfield , and saw her safely lodged in that third-storey room , of whose secret inner cabinet she has now for ten years made a wild beast ' s den -- a goblin ' s cell . I had some trouble in finding an attendant for her , as it was necessary to select one on whose fidelity dependence could be placed ; for her ravings would inevitably betray my secret : besides , she had lucid intervals of days -- sometimes weeks -- which she filled up with abuse of me . At last I hired Grace Poole from the Grimbsy Retreat . She and the surgeon , Carter ( who dressed Mason ' s wounds that night he was stabbed and worried ), are the only two I have ever admitted to my confidence . Mrs . Fairfax may indeed have suspected something , but she could have gained no precise knowledge as to facts . Grace has , on the whole , proved a good keeper ; though , owing partly to a fault of her own , of which it appears nothing can cure her , and which is incident to her harassing profession , her vigilance has been more than once lulled and baffled . The lunatic is both cunning and malignant ; she has never failed to take advantage of her guardian ' s temporary lapses ; once to secrete the knife with which she stabbed her brother , and twice to