like
poor Louis--why? Do you wish that Robert's brother were more highly
placed?"

"Robert's brother, indeed!" was the exclamation in a tone of scorn, and,
with a movement of proud impatience, Shirley snatched a rose from a
branch peeping through the open lattice. "Robert's brother! Robert's
brother is a topic on which you and I shall quarrel if we discuss it
often; so drop it henceforth and for ever."

She would have understood the meaning of that outburst better if she had
heard a conversation in the schoolroom a few days later between Louis
Moore and Shirley.

"For two years," he was saying, "I had once a pupil who grew very dear
to me. Henry is dear, but she was dearer. Henry never gives me trouble;
she--well--she did. She spilled the draught from my cup; and having
taken from me my peace of mind and ease of life, she took from me
herself, quite coolly--just as if, when she was gone, the world would be
all the same to me. At the end of two years it fell out that we
encountered again. She received me haughtily; but then she was
inconsistent: she tantalised as before. When I thought of her only as a
lofty stranger, she would suddenly show me a glimpse of loving
simplicity, warm me with such a beam of reviving sympathy that I could
no more shut my heart to her image than I could close that door against
her presence. Explain why she distressed me so."

"She could not bear to be quite outcast," was the docile reply.

Caroline would have understood still more could she have read what Louis
Moore wrote in his diary that night: "What a child she is sometimes!
What an unsophisticated, untaught thing! I worship her perfections; but
it is her faults, or at least her foibles, that bring her near to me. If
I were a king and she were a housemaid, my eye would recognise her
qualities."

Robert Moore had long been absent from Briarfield, and no one knew why
he stayed away. It could not be that he was afraid, for he had shown the
utmost fearlessness in bringing to justice and transportation the four
ringleaders in the attack on the mill. He had now returned, and one day
as he rode over Rushedge Moore from Stilbro' market with a bluff
neighbour, he unbosomed himself of the reason why he had remained thus
long from home.

"I certainly believed she loved me," he said. "I have seen her eyes
sparkle when she found me out in a crowd. When my name was uttered she
changed countenance; I knew she did. She was cordial to me; she took