①No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-room; it only gave my nerves a shock of which I feel the reverberation to this day. ②Yes, Mrs. Reed, to you I owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering, but I ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did: while rending my heart-strings, you thought you were only uprooting my bad propensities.

③Next day, by noon, I was up and dressed, and sat wrapped in a shawl by the nursery hearth. ④I felt physically weak and broken down: but my worse ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness which kept drawing from me silent tears; no sooner had I wiped one salt drop from my cheek than another followed. ⑤Yet, I thought, I ought to have been happy, for none of the Reeds were there, they were all gone out in the carriage with their mama. ⑥Abbot, too, was sewing in another room, and Bessie, as she moved hither and thither, putting away toys and arranging drawers, addressed to me every now and then a word of unwonted kindness. ⑦This state of things should have been to me a paradise of peace, accustomed as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless fagging; but, in fact, my racked nerves were now in such a state that no calm could soothe, and no pleasure excite them agreeably.

incident [??ns?d?nt] n．事件

physically[?f?z?kl?]ad．身體上地，完全地

unutterable [?n??t?r?bl] a．說不出的，難以形容的