Jane passes her time at the Lowood school for another 8 years. But when Miss Temple retires, she finds herself in need of a change. She puts in an ad for a governess position and is accepted. She travels a week later to Thornfield.

At Thornfield, she is greeted by Mrs Fairfax in a friendly manor. The next morning she explains that a Mr Rochester is the owner of the Thornfield, but that he is away. Fairfax introduces her to Adela, his daughter, for whom Jane will be the governess.

Jane narrates that she would go to the roof of Thornfield and overlook the landscape. She longed to reach out. She was thankful for the goodness of Fairfax and Adele, but "believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in, I wished to behold.“ Thus she tells us of her restlessness and yearning for action; the need to exercise her faculties and find a field for her efforts.

One afternoon she decides to walk to town to send off a letter, and on the way, meets Rochester, who, after slipping on a patch of ice, had fallen off his horse. She offers him help to get back on his horse and is content to have offered help and had it accepted. She returns to Thornfield to find that it was Rochester she had helped.

A few days later, she is invited to tea, where he tersely interviews her. He shows himself to be interested, but not fawning. He recognizes both talents as well as deficiencies and is blunt about comments. Later he has another conversation, much more in depth, with her over various subjects. He is disarming, genuine, and treats her as an equal. The end of the conversation sees him declare that he will get pleasure from life, that he has a right to it. Jane counters that it would degenerate him even more than he already felt. He seems to be hinting that he sees something in her that he is willing to transgress for, while she is unaware of his intent.

At a later date, Rochester explains to Jane about Adele’s mother; how he had fallen for her and discovered that she was then with other men. He compliments Jane by telling her that she is one to whom one can tell secrets.

Over the coming weeks Jane notes: 

"The confidence he had thought fit to repose in me seemed a tribute to my discretion. I regarded and accepted it as such. I, indeed, talked comparatively little, but I heard him talk with relish. It was his nature to be communicative….and I a keen delight in receiving the new ideas he offered, in imagining the new pictures he portrayed, and in following him in thought through the new regions he disclosed…”

Jane is finding an outlet for some of the belief that she had in the wider world, and she finds respect and friendship in being treated as a confidant to this man.

The next chapter relates Jane’s saving Rochester from being burned alive, after his bed is set on fire. He expresses his gratitude to Jane for saving his life.

Shortly after, he leaves for a spell to spend time at another manor close by. Mrs Fairfax tells her that there are many fine ladies there, including one Blanche Ingram, who is said to be most beautiful. Jane chastises herself for ever thinking that she herself might be able to interest Rochester, when he has such beautiful possibilities available. She does a chalk portrait of herself, with all her faults, and one of Blanche, as closely as she could imagine given the description, as a reminder that Rochester would never want to choose someone like her when he had Blanche as an option.

A few weeks later Rochester returns with the entire party as his guests. Jane has a chance to view the ladies in person, and while she is in the shadows, she notes Rochester’s face as he converses with one of the women. She admits to herself:

“Most true it is that ‘beauty is in the eye of the gazer.’ [His features] were not beautiful, according to the rule; but they were more than beautiful to me… He made me love him without looking at me. Did I forbid myself to think of him in any other light than as a paymaster? Blasphemy against nature! Every good, true, vigorous feeling I have gathers impulsively around him. I must conceal my sentiments… and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.”

 
I love this honesty; it is so well written and rings so true. (Maybe that doesn’t need to be said since one of the hallmarks of something well-written is that it does ring true.) Jane has sensed there is more to Rochester, that he appreciates her and sees something in her. She tries to carry herself according to the conventions that would have said she was beneath him, and therefore he was off-limits to her, but her intuition told her something different, and she has the internal strength of character to accept it for what it is. She doesn’t yet presume that the relationship would come to fruition, but she doesn’t pretend either. She is truthful to herself. 

Chapter XVIII recounts Blanche’s attempts to enchant Rochester. His upperclass guests ensconced in his home, he is in a perpetual party for weeks. While he spends no time with Jane, she nonetheless makes these insightful observations:

“I told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr Rochester: I could not unlove him now, merely because he had ceased to notice me. There was nothing to cool or to banish love in these circumstances, though much to create despair. I was not jealous. Miss Ingram was a mark below jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; She was showy, but she was not genuine… she advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her. Too often she betrayed this… Mr Rochester himself exercised over his intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this sagacity… of his fair one’s defects- this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments towards her, that my ever-torturing pain arose.  I felt he had not given her his love…. Why can she not influence him more, when she is privileged to draw so near him? I asked myself”

(those are only excerpts from a longer section, not the entirety of her musings) I love this passage. Can’t really add any more than that. 

Rochester is called away to business but his guests remain. That evening, a gypsy woman arrives wanting to tell the fortunes, but only of the single women. Blanche goes first, but comes out sullen. The rest go in, but the gypsy woman won’t leave until she has seen Jane too. Jane goes in but is guarded. At the end of the interview, Rochester reveals himself as the prankster dressed as an old gypsy woman. He asks about the guests reactions, and is also informed that a Mr Mason has arrived from Jamaica.  

Most of this is retelling, not commentary on certain points. But Charlotte Bronte writes this so well that I don’t feel like I add much at this point. So I just leave them here