I then sat down: I felt weak and tired.

I leaned my arms on a table, and my head dropped on them.

And now I thought: till now I had only heard, seen, moved--followed up and down where I was led or dragged--watched event rush on event, disclosure open beyond disclosure: but _now_, _I thought_.
The morning had been a quiet morning enough--all except the brief scene with the lunatic: the transaction in the church had not been noisy; there was no explosion of passion, no loud altercation, no dispute, no defiance or challenge, no tears, no sobs: a few words had been spoken, a calmly pronounced objection to the marriage made; some stern, short questions put by Mr.Rochester; answers, explanations given, evidence adduced; an open admission of the truth had been uttered by my master; then the living proof had been seen; the intruders were gone, and all was over.
I was in my own room as usual--just myself, without obvious change: nothing had smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me.

And yet where was the Jane Eyre of yesterday ?--where was her life ?--where were her prospects?
Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman--almost a bride, was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate.

A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and flagrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway.