Miss Ingram, I am sure you will not fail in evincing superiority to idle terrors.

Amy and Louisa, return to your nests like a pair of doves, as you are.

Mesdames" (to the dowagers), "you will take cold to a dead certainty, if you stay in this chill gallery any longer." And so, by dint of alternate coaxing and commanding, he contrived to get them all once more enclosed in their separate dormitories.

I did not wait to be ordered back to mine, but retreated unnoticed, as unnoticed I had left it.
Not, however, to go to bed: on the contrary, I began and dressed myself carefully.

The sounds I had heard after the scream, and the words that had been uttered, had probably been heard only by me; for they had proceeded from the room above mine: but they assured me that it was not a servant's dream which had thus struck horror through the house; and that the explanation Mr.Rochester had given was merely an invention framed to pacify his guests.