Chapter 12 — the road to Hay; a horse on the ice

Months pass. Jane settles into the routine of teaching Adèle and is restive under the smallness of it. In the famous passage at the start of the chapter, she stands on the third-floor leads and looks out toward the horizon, longing for "more of practical experience than I possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character, than was here within my reach." It is the first time the novel's narrator has explicitly asked for a larger life.

One January afternoon she offers to take Mrs. Fairfax's letter to the post at Hay, two miles away. She walks alone. The lane is empty; the moon is just rising; her footsteps are the only sound. As she sits on a stile to rest she hears a horse coming up the lane behind her. The sound is dull on the frozen ground; the horse comes around a bend; its rider, taking it at a brisk pace, is on her before he sees her. The horse slips on a sheet of ice and falls, throwing the rider.

Jane runs to him. He is unhurt except for a sprained ankle. He is dark-haired, dark-browed, in his late thirties, impatient with his own injury, with a large Newfoundland dog at his side. He looks at Jane with the kind of frank attention adults seldom give to small governesses. He accepts her help in catching the horse and remounting. He rides on without telling her his name. Jane walks back to Thornfield. As she enters the hall the dog from the lane comes out to meet her. Mrs. Fairfax, that evening, mentions casually that the master has come home unexpectedly. The horseman in the lane has been Mr. Rochester. The novel has met its hero, and they have already met on equal ground.