JANE came round from a dead faint, to find herself in the care of two sisters and their brother, St John Rivers.*

St John’s burning ambition was to go to India as a missionary, and it was not long before he asked Jane to accompany him as his wife.

Though Jane knew it was a marriage of convenience only, it seemed a noble sacrifice. Yet even as she resolved to accept, she was startled by what sounded like Edward’s voice, distant, ghost-like, calling her name in pain.

Jane raced back over the miles to Thornfield Hall, only to find it a blackened, burned-out shell.

In a final act of insane malice, Bertha had torched the house, and in trying without success to rescue her, Edward had been blinded and disfigured.

But Jane did not care. Her Aunt Reed, as she lay dying, had confessed hiding a handsome legacy from her, and Edward was free to marry. And Jane married him.