painting in oil

secondly, because it was dark, strong, and stern. I had it still
before me when I entered Hay, and slipped the letter into the
post-office; I saw it as I walked fast down-hill all the way home.
When I came to the stile, I stopped a minute, looked round and
listened, with an idea that a horse's hoofs might ring on the causeway
again, and that a rider in a cloak, and a Gytrash-like Newfoundland
dog, might be again apparent: I saw only the hedge and a pollard
willow before me, rising up still and straight to meet the
moonbeams; I heard only the faintest waft of wind roaming fitful among
the trees round Thornfield, a mile distant; and when I glanced down in
the direction of the murmur, my eye, traversing the hall-front, caught
a light kindling in a window: it reminded me that I was late, and I
hurried on.
I did not like re-entering Thornfield. To pass its threshold was to
return to stagnation; to cross the silent hall, to ascend the darksome
staircase, to seek my own lonely little room, and then to meet
tranquil Mrs. Fairfax, and spend the long winter evening with her, and
her only, was to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened by my
walk,- to slip again over my faculties the viewless fetters of an