Page:Jane Eyre (1st edition), Volume 3.djvu/183

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
JANE EYRE.
175

the nephew and three nieces of our uncle, will give five thousand to each? What I want is, that you should write to your sisters and tell them of the fortune that has accrued to them."

"To you, you mean."

"I have intimated my view of the case: I am incapable of taking any other. I am not brutally selfish, blindly unjust, or fiendishly ungrateful. Besides, I am resolved I will have a home and connections. I like Moor-House, and I will live at Moor-House; I like Diana, and Mary, and I will attach myself for life to Diana and Mary. It would please and benefit me to have five thousand pounds; it would torment and oppress me to have twenty thousand: which, moreover, could never be mine in justice, though it might in law. I abandon to you, then, what is absolutely superfluous to me. Let there be no opposition, and no discussion about it: let us agree amongst each other, and decide the point at once."

"This is acting on first impulses: you must take days to consider such a matter, ere your word can be regarded as valid."

"Oh! if all you doubt is my sincerity, I am easy: you see the justice of the case?"

"I do see a certain justice; but it is contrary