Though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even more retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely enough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in the heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement. Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge: but to each villain his own vice; and mine is not a tendency to indirect assassination, even of what I most hate.
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Rochester explains himself to Jane about imprisoning his mad wife in a room in the attic at Thornfield. He attempts to humanize his actions by saying that he could have housed her in Ferndean Manor, an old house full of dampness and hidden in a wood.