became Mrs. Rochester. Norton Conyers, a house near Ripon, it is said, is associated with the story that a mad woman was once confined there.[17] If Charlotte Brontë was familiar with this story, and we are told the interior is somewhat similar to the descriptions of Thornfield, we can understand that, perusing Montagu's book at the time when she was utilizing his narrative of the candle-bearing, hideous-faced, white-clad midnight visitant in a house of mystery, she would the more readily appropriate the further suggestions his work contained in regard to a wife's insanity, and the "veil-clad" apparition of a night-roaming insane lady. It is important to note, however, that the evidence of my preceding chapter proves indubitably the "mad woman" was but a secondary suggestion--the primary suggestion responsible for the plot of _Jane Eyre_ being that of Montagu's midnight apparition. And just as the thick-set country-bred servant denotes in the question as to the origin and author of the candle-bearing bedside visitant in _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_, the "gauzy veil" likewise denotes as to the origin of the mad woman of _Jane Eyre_. So we read in the beginning of Chapter XXV. of _Jane Eyre_, that Jane leaves the vapoury veil in the closet:-- To conceal the strange, wraith-like apparel it contained; which, at this evening hour ... gave out certainly a most ghostly shimmer through the shadow of my apartment. "I will leave you by yourself, white dream," I said. Then farther on we read that:-- The moon shut herself wholly within her chamber, and drew close her curtain of cloud, which is simply an antithetical paraphrase of Montagu's quoted verse on "The Waning Moon" which, like A ... lady ... pale ... totters forth wrapt in a gauzy veil, out of her chamber. And in the same chapter of _Jane Eyre_ we read finally that the insane lady, who has come out of her chamber, "... took my veil from its place; she held it up, gazed at it long, and then she threw it over her head, and turned to the mirror ... it removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts, and flinging both on the floor, trampled on them." CHAPTER IV. A RAINY DAY IN CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S CHILDHOOD: THE OPENING INCIDENT IN THE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF THE HEROINES OF "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" AND "JANE EYRE." Seeing Catherine Earnshaw, the heroine of _Wuthering Heights_, was drawn, as I find, by Charlotte Brontë for her autobiographical self, the real commencement of that work, in so far as personal narrative was concerned, is the diary extract she wrote of herself in her earliest childhood.[18] In _Jane Eyre_ she placed her earliest childhood memories at the beginning of the story. I will give extracts side by side, when it will be seen they agree practically word for word. It is of course undeniable that none but Charlotte Brontë herself would or could have penned these incidents of her own childhood.