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But I stayed out a few minutes longer with Adèle and Pilot—ran a race with her; and played a game of battledore and shuttlecock。 When we went in; and I had removed her bon and coat; I took her on my knee; kept her there an hour; allowing her to prattle as she liked: not rebuking even some little freedoms and trivialities into which she was apt to stray when much noticed; and which betrayed in her a superficiality of character; inherited probably from her mother; hardly congenial to an English mind。 Still she had her merits; and I was disposed to appreciate all that was good in her to the utmost。 I sought in her countenance and features a likeness to Mr。 Rochester; but found none: no trait; no turn of expression announced relationship。 It was a pity: if she could but have been proved to resemble him; he would have thought more of her。
It was not till after I had withdrawn to my own chamber for the night; that I steadily reviewed the tale Mr。 Rochester had told me。 As he had said; there was probably nothing at all extraordinary in the substance of the narrative itself: a wealthy Englishman’s passion for a French dancer; and her treachery to him; were every… day matters enough; no doubt; in society; but there was something decidedly strange in the paroxysm of emotion which had suddenly seized him when he was in the act of expressing the present contentment of his mood; and his newly revived pleasure in the old hall and its environs。 I meditated wonderingly on this inc