I have told you, reader, that I had learned to love Mr. Rochester; I could not...

I have told you, reader, that I had learned to love Mr. Rochester; I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me-because I might pass hours in his presence and he would never once turn his eyes in my direction-because I saw all his attentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me with the hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and imperious eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as from an object too mean to merit observation. I could not unlove him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady-because I read daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting her-because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship which, if careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very pride, irresistible.
There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances; though much to create despair. Much too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy, if a woman in my position could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram's. But I was not jealous, or very rarely;-the nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by that word. Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling.