As I sat in my usual nook, and looked at him with the light of the girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him —­ for he occupied an arm-chair drawn close to the fire, and kept shrinking still nearer, as if he were cold, I compared him with Mr. Rochester.  I think (with deference be it spoken) the contrast could not be much greater between a sleek gander and a fierce falcon:  between a meek sheep and the rough-coated keen-eyed dog, its guardian.

He had spoken of Mr. Rochester as an old friend.  A curious friendship theirs must have been:  a pointed illustration, indeed, of the old adage that “extremes meet.”

Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him, and I caught at times scraps of their conversation across the room.  At first I could not make much sense of what I heard; for the discourse of Louisa Eshton and Mary Ingram, who sat nearer to me, confused the fragmentary sentences that reached me at intervals.  These last were discussing the stranger; they both called him “a beautiful man.”  Louisa said he was “a love of a creature,” and she “adored him;” and Mary instanced his “pretty little mouth, and nice nose,” as her ideal of the charming.

“And what a sweet-tempered forehead he has!” cried Louisa, —­ “so smooth —­ none of those frowning irregularities I dislike so much; and such a placid eye and smile!”

And then, to my great relief, Mr. Henry Lynn summoned them to the other side of the room, to settle some point about the deferred excursion to Hay Common.

I was now able to concentrate my attention on the group by the fire, and I presently gathered that the new-comer was called Mr. Mason; then I learned that he was but just arrived in England, and that he came from some hot country:  which was the reason, doubtless, his face was so sallow, and that he sat so near the hearth, and wore a surtout in the house.  Presently the words Jamaica, Kingston, Spanish Town, indicated the West Indies as his residence; and it was with no little surprise I gathered, ere long, that he had there first seen and become acquainted with Mr. Rochester.  He spoke of his friend’s dislike of the burning heats, the hurricanes, and rainy seasons of that region.  I knew Mr. Rochester had been a traveller:  Mrs. Fairfax had said so; but I thought the continent of Europe had bounded his wanderings; till now I had never heard a hint given of visits to more distant shores.

I was pondering these things, when an incident, and a somewhat unexpected one, broke the thread of my musings.  Mr. Mason, shivering as some one chanced to open the door, asked for more coal to be put on the fire, which had burnt out its flame, though its mass of cinder still shone hot and red.  The footman who brought the coal, in going out, stopped near Mr. Eshton’s chair, and said something to him in a low voice, of which I heard only the words, “old woman,” —­ “quite troublesome.”

“Tell her she shall be put in the stocks if she does not take herself off,” replied the magistrate.