Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Chapter 20 Page 36

“Will Grace Poole live here still, sir?”

“Oh yes!

don’t trouble your head about her — put the thing out of your thoughts.”

“Yet it seems to me your life is hardly secure while she stays.”

“Never fear — I will take care of myself.”

“Is the danger you apprehended last night gone by now, sir?”

“I cannot vouch for that till Mason is out of England: nor even then. To live, for me, Jane, is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack and spue fire any day.”

“But Mr. Mason seems a man easily led. Your influence, sir, is evidently potent with him: he will never set you at defiance or wilfully injure you.”