I started, or rather (for like other defaulters, I like to lay half the blame on ill fortune and adverse circumstances) was thrust on to a wrong tack at the age of one-and-twenty, and have never recovered the right course since: but I might have been very different; I might have been as good as you--wiser--almost as stainless.

I envy you your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory.

Little girl, a memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure--an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment: is it not ?" "How was your memory when you were eighteen, sir ?" "All right then; limpid, salubrious: no gush of bilge water had turned it to fetid puddle.

I was your equal at eighteen--quite your equal.

Nature meant me to be, on the whole, a good man, Miss Eyre; one of the better kind, and you see I am not so.