CHAPTER VIII 88
" I am afraid I never shall do that."
" Why?"
" Because I have been wrongly accused; and you, ma ' am, and everybody else, will now think me wicked."
" We shall think you what you prove yourself to be, my child. Continue to act as a good girl, and you will satisfy us."
" Shall I, Miss Temple?"
" You will," said she, passing her arm round me. " And now tell me who is the lady whom Mr. Brocklehurst called your benefactress?"
" Mrs. Reed, my uncle ' s wife. My uncle is dead, and he left me to her care." " Did she not, then, adopt you of her own accord?"
" No, ma ' am; she was sorry to have to do it: but my uncle, as I have often heard the servants say, got her to promise before he died that she would always keep me."
" Well now, Jane, you know, or at least I will tell you, that when a criminal is accused, he is always allowed to speak in his own defence. You have been charged with falsehood; defend yourself to me as well as you can. Say whatever your memory suggests is true; but add nothing and exaggerate nothing."
I resolved, in the depth of my heart, that I would be most moderate-- most correct; and, having reflected a few minutes in order to arrange coherently what I had to say, I told her all the story of my sad childhood. Exhausted by emotion, my language was more subdued than it generally was when it developed that sad theme; and mindful of Helen ' s warnings against the indulgence of resentment, I infused into the narrative far less of gall and wormwood than ordinary. Thus restrained and simplified, it sounded more