"...she regarded me so icily, I felt at once that her opinion of me--her feeling towards me—was unchanged and unchangeable. I knew by her stony eye—opaque to tenderness, indissoluble to tears—that she was resolved to consider me bad to the last; because to believe me good would give her no generous pleasure: only a sense of mortification" (234).
To put the matter simply, Mrs. Reed hates her niece, Jane Eyre. From the moment that Mr. Reed was on his deathbed pleading his wife to care for the orphaned Jane, Mrs. Reed has hated Jane. Mrs. Reed always felt as if Jane had been forced upon her and therefore she feels as if she cannot truly treat Jane as one of her own children. Since Mrs. Reed prefers her own children to Jane this additionally insinuates a negative relationship between Jane and her aunt. Mrs. Reed eventually cannot stand Jane's presence anymore and sends her off to Lowood School so she will no longer have to deal with her. After Jane leaves Lowood and becomes a governess, she receives a message saying that Mrs. Reed is on her deathbed and is asking for Jane. When Jane arrives she encounters the scene depicted above. Jane realizes that even on her deathbed, Mrs. Reed will never love Jane nor like her in the slightest. Mrs. Reed, unlike many other characters in the novel, does not change at all.