The same suffering and conflict ensued, heightened by the
strong recoil of her upright heretic and English spirit from the
gentle Jesuitry of the foreign and Romish system. Once more she
seemed sinking, but this time she rallied through the mere force of
resolution: with inward remorse and shame she looked back on her
former failure, and resolved to conquer, but the victory cost her
dear. She was never happy till she carried her hard-won knowledge
back to the remote English village, the old parsonage-house, and
desolate Yorkshire hills."
They wanted learning. They came for learning. They would learn. Where
they had a distinct purpose to be achieved in intercourse with their
fellows, they forgot themselves; at all other times they were miserably
shy. Mrs. Jenkins told me that she used to ask them to spend Sundays and
holidays with her, until she found that they felt more pain than pleasure
from such visits. Emily hardly ever uttered more than a monosyllable.
Charlotte was sometimes excited sufficiently to speak eloquently and
well--on certain subjects; but before her tongue was thus loosened, she
had a habit of gradually wheeling round on her chair, so as almost to
conceal her face from the person to whom she was speaking.
And yet there was much in Brussels to strike a responsive chord in her
powerful imagination.
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