《简爱》✍ 第一章：8

The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea, I believed to be marine phantoms.

两艘停在死寂海面上的船，我相信准是两个海中的幽灵。

The fiend pinning down the thief's  pack behind him, I passed over quickly: it was an object of terror.

魔鬼从身后按住窃贼的背包，那模样实在可怕，我赶紧翻了过去。

So was the black horned thing seated aloof on a rock, surveying a distant crowd surrounding a gallows.

同样可怕的是，那个头上长角的黑色怪物，独踞于岩石上，远眺着一大群人围着绞架。

Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my un-developed understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting: as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and when, having brought her ironing-table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us to sit about it, and while she got up Mrs. Reed's lace frills, and crimped her nightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads; or (as at a later period I discov-ered)  from the pages of Pamela, and Henry, Earl of Moreland.

每幅画都在讲述一个故事，由于我理解力不足，欣赏水平有限，它们往往显得神秘莫测，却愈发感到它们十分有趣，就像某些冬夜，贝茜碰巧心情不错时讲述的故事一样；遇到这种时候，贝茜会把烫衣桌搬到育儿室的壁炉旁边，让我们围着她坐好，一边烫平里德太太的挑花绉边，把她睡帽边缘烫出褶线来，一边让我们迫不及待地倾听她讲述一段段爱情和冒险故事，这些片段取自于古老的神话传说和远古歌谣，或者如我后来所发现，来自《帕美拉》和《莫兰伯爵亨利》。