ke, and pass full and powerful before you--almost without leave
from her--you gaze, wonder; you admire, and--I think--love her."

"You saw this spectacle?"

"Yes; at dead of night, when all the house was silent, and starlight and
the cold reflection from the snow glimmered in our chamber, then I saw
Shirley's heart."

"Her heart's core? Do you think she showed you that?"

"Her heart's core."

"And how was it?"

"Like a shrine, for it was holy; like snow, for it was pure; like
flame, for it was warm; like death, for it was strong."

"Can she love? tell me that."

"What think you?"

"She has loved none that have loved her yet."

"Who are those that have loved her?"

He named a list of gentlemen, closing with Sir Philip Nunnely.

"She has loved none of these."

"Yet some of them were worthy of a woman's affection."

"Of some women's, but not of Shirley's."

"Is she better than others of her sex?"

"She is peculiar, and more dangerous to take as a wife--rashly."

"I can imagine that."

"She spoke of you----"

"Oh, she did! I thought you denied it."

"She did not speak in the way you fancy; but I asked her, and I would
make her tell me what she thought of you, or rather how she felt towards
you. I wanted to know; I had long wanted to know."

"So had I; but let us hear. She thinks meanly, she feels contemptuously,
doubtless?"

"She thinks of you almost as highly as a woman can think of a man. You
know she can be eloquent. I yet feel in fancy the glow of the language
in which her opinion was conveyed."

"But how does she feel?"

"Till you shocked her (she said you had shocked her, but she would not
tell me how) she felt as a sister feels towards a brother of whom she is
at once fond and proud."

"I'll shock her no more, Cary, for the shock rebounded on myself till I
staggered again. But that comparison about sister and brother is all
nonsense. She is too rich and proud to entertain fraternal sentiments
for me."

"You don't know her, Robert; and, somehow, I fancy now (I had other
ideas formerly) that you cannot know her. You and she are not so
constructed as to be able thoroughly to understand each other."

"It may be so. I esteem her, I admire her; and yet my impressions
concerning her are harsh--perhaps uncharitable. I believe, for instance,
that she is incapable of love----"

"Shirley incapable of love!"

"That she will never marry. I imagine her jealous of compromising her
pride, of r