简爱中英文版（63）

comply答应
desolation荒芜
spectacle场面
originate发生
confinement监禁
conjecture推测

Some answer must have been as to what had happened. I could find it nowhere but at the inn, so I returned. The host himself brought my breakfast into the room. I requested him to sit down, because I had some questions to ask him. But when he complied, I did not know of the horror of his possible answers. The desolation I had just left prepared me a measure for a tale of misery. He was a respectable-looking, middle-aged man.
“Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?”
“No, ma ‘am! No one is living there. I suppose you are a stranger in these parts , or you would have heard what happened last autumn. Thornfield Hall is a ruin.
A dreadful calamity! Such an immense quantity of valuable property destroyed. The fire broke out in the middle of the night, and before help arrived from
Millcote, the building was one mass of flame. It was a terrible spectacle. I witnessed*it myself.”
“Middle of the night!”I muttered. “Was it known how it originated?”I demanded.
“You are not perhaps aware that ther was a lady, a lunatic, kept in the house? ” he continued, pulling his chair closer to the table, and speaking low.
“She was kept in very close confinement, ma'am. People even for some years were not absolutely certain of her existence. No one saw her. They only knew by rumor that such a person was at the Hall, and who or what she was it was difficult to conjecture. They said Mr. Edward had brought her from abroad, and some believed she had been his mistress. But a queer thing happened a year ago-a very queer thing. This lady, ma ‘am, turned out to be Mr. Rochester’s wife! ”he answered.
"This lady. ma' am, turned out to be Mr. Rochester's wifel"he answered. “The discovery was brought about in the strangest way. There was a young lady, a governess at the Hall, whom Mr. Rochester fell in love with . The servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was: he was after her continually. They used to watch him, and he set store on her past everything for all. nobody but him thought her so very beautiful. Mr. Rochester was about forty and this governess not twenty; and you see, when gentlemen of his age fall in love win girls, they are often like as if they were bewitched. Well ，he would marry her.”