“Is he with Damer de Rochester, sharing the shelter of his narrow marble house?”

Some answer must be had to these questions. I could find it nowhere but at the inn, and thither, ere long, I returned. The host himself brought my breakfast into the parlour. I requested him to shut the door and sit down: I had some questions to ask him. But when he complied, I scarcely knew how to begin; such horror had I of the possible answers. And yet the spectacle of desolation I had just left prepared me in a measure for a tale of misery.

The host was a respectable-looking, middle-aged man.

“You know Thornfield Hall, of course?” I managed to say at laSt. “Yes, ma’am; I lived there once.”

“Did you?”