Quotation from: Villette

Written by: Charlotte Bronte


Where, indeed, does the moon not look well? What is the scene,
confined or expansive, which her orb does not hallow? Rosy or fiery,
she mounted now above a not distant bank; even while we watched her
flushed ascent, she cleared to gold, and in very brief space, floated
up stainless into a now calm sky. Did moonlight soften or sadden Dr.
Bretton? Did it touch him with romance? I think it did. Albeit of no
sighing mood, he sighed in watching it: sighed to himself quietly. No
need to ponder the cause or the course of that sigh; I knew it was
wakened by beauty; I knew it pursued Ginevra. Knowing this, the idea
pressed upon me that it was in some sort my duty to speak the name he
meditated. Of course he was ready for the subject: I saw in his
countenance a teeming plenitude of comment, question and interest; a
pressure of language and sentiment, only checked, I thought, by sense
of embarrassment how to begin. To spare him this embarrassment was my
best, indeed my sole use. I had but to utter the idol's name, and
love's tender litany would flow out. I had just found a fitting
phrase, "You know that Miss Fanshawe is gone on a tour with the
Cholmondeleys," and was opening my lips to speak to it, when he
scattered my plans by introducing another theme.

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