Quotation from: Villette

Written by: Charlotte Bronte


I caught myself smiling as I lay awake and thoughtful on my couch--
smiling at Madame. The unction, the suavity of her behaviour offered,
for one who knew her, a sure token that suspicion of some kind was
busy in her brain. From some aperture or summit of observation,
through parted bough or open window, she had doubtless caught a
glimpse, remote or near, deceptive or instructive, of that night's
transactions. Finely accomplished as she was in the art of
surveillance, it was next to impossible that a casket could be thrown
into her garden, or an interloper could cross her walks to seek it,
without that she, in shaken branch, passing shade, unwonted footfall,
or stilly murmur (and though Dr. John had spoken very low in the few
words he dropped me, yet the hum of his man's voice pervaded, I
thought, the whole conventual ground)--without, I say, that she should
have caught intimation of things extraordinary transpiring on her
premises. _What_ things, she might by no means see, or at that
time be able to discover; but a delicious little ravelled plot lay
tempting her to disentanglement; and in the midst, folded round and
round in cobwebs, had she not secured "Meess Lucie" clumsily involved,
like the foolish fly she was?

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Old Dominion University CS Dept
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