of the three sisters. I once asked Charlotte--we were talking
about the description of Lowood school, and she was saying that
she was not sure whether she should have written it, if she had
been aware how instantaneously it would have been identified with
Cowan Bridge--whether the popularity to which the novel attained
had taken her by surprise. She hesitated a little, and then said:
"I believed that what had impressed me so forcibly when I wrote
it, must make a strong impression on any one who read it. I was
not surprised at those who read "Jane Eyre" being deeply
interested in it; but I hardly expected that a book by an unknown
author could find readers."

The sisters had kept the knowledge of their literary ventures
from their father, fearing to increase their own anxieties and
disappointment by witnessing his; for he took an acute interest
in all that befell his children, and his own tendency had been
towards literature in the days when he was young and hopeful. It
was true he did not much manifest his feelings in words; he would
have thought that he was prepared for disappointment as the lot
of man, and that he could have met it with stoicism; but words
are poor and tardy interpreters of feelings to those who love one
another, and his daughters knew how he would have borne
ill-success worse for them than for himself. So they did not tell
him what they were undertaking. He says now that he suspected it
all along, but his suspicions could take no exact form, as all he
was certain of was, that his children were perpetually
writing--and not writing letters. We have seen how the
communications from their publishers were received "under cover
to Miss Bronte." Once, Charlotte told me, they overheard the
postman meeting Mr. Bronte, as the latter was leaving the house,