'Mrs. Fairfax!' I called out: for I now heard her descending the great stairs. 'Did you hear that loud laugh? Who is it?' 'Some of the servants, very likely,' she answered: 'perhaps Grace Poole'. .
This laugh was mirthless, an inhumane and ironic laugh, foreshadowing Bertha's in-human insanity. Mrs. Fairfax was the first to assume incorrectly that Grace was the cause of the laughter; this assumption led to Grace being scapegoated for Bertha's insanity. On the contrary, Grace Pool is only Bertha Mason's caretaker, not the insane lady herself. Jane continues to describe her experience with the laugh: "I really did not expect any Grace to answer; for the laugh was as tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard; and, but that it was high noon, and that no circumstance of ghostliness accompanied the curious cachinnation; but that neither scene nor season favoured fear, I should have been superstitiously afraid." The laugh is just as otherworldly and supernatural as Bertha is, since Jane calls it the most preternatural, meaning supernatural laugh she ever heard. Jane describes this laugh as being almost mythical since she should have been almost as afraid as one is of a superstition. Even though the laugh is described as mythical, Jane says that the laugh was not from a ghost, but from an exact location on the floor; foreshadowing an actual mad human being the cause of this distressed sound.
A mysterious fire next foreshadows Bertha Mason's existence. Jane wakes up in the middle of the night to find Mr. Rochester's bedroom ablaze. The identity of the arsonist is unknown, and assumed by Jane and Mr. Rochester to once again be servant Grace Pool. This demonic laugh is heard once again during the arson: "This was a demoniac laugh--low, suppressed, and deep--uttered, as it seemed, at the very keyhole of my chamber door 'Was that Grace Poole? and is she possessed with a devil?'" Grace Pool here is compared to the devil, a comparison that foreshadows the reveal of Bertha Mason's fiery and demonic personality and her anger towards Jane and Mr.
