and actually, towards the close of September, arrived at the priory.

He soon made a call at Fieldhead, and his first visit was not his last.
He said--when he had achieved the round of the neighbourhood--that under
no roof had he found such pleasant shelter as beneath the massive oak
beams of the gray manor-house of Briarfield; a cramped, modest dwelling
enough compared with his own, but he liked it.

Presently it did not suffice to sit with Shirley in her panelled
parlour, where others came and went, and where he could rarely find a
quiet moment to show her the latest production of his fertile muse; he
must have her out amongst the pleasant pastures, and lead her by the
still waters. _Tete-a-tete_ ramblings she shunned, so he made parties
for her to his own grounds, his glorious forest; to remoter
scenes--woods severed by the Wharfe, vales watered by the Aire.

Such assiduity covered Miss Keeldar with distinction. Her uncle's
prophetic soul anticipated a splendid future. He already scented the
time afar off when, with nonchalant air, and left foot nursed on his
right knee, he should be able to make dashingly-familiar allusion to his
"nephew the baronet." Now his niece dawned upon him no longer "a mad
girl," but a "most sensible woman." He termed her, in confidential
dialogues with Mrs. Sympson, "a truly superior person; peculiar, but
very clever." He treated her with exceeding deference; rose reverently
to open and shut doors for her; reddened his face and gave himself
headaches with stooping to pick up gloves, handkerchiefs, and other
loose property, whereof Shirley usually held but insecure tenure. He
would cut mysterious jokes about the superiority of woman's wit over
man's wisdom; commence obscure apologies for the blundering mistake he
had committed respecting the generalship, the tactics, of "a personage
not a hundred miles from Fieldhead." In short, he seemed elate as any
"midden-cock on pattens."

His niece viewed his manoeuvres and received his innuendoes with phlegm;
apparently she did not above half comprehend to what aim they tended.
When plainly charged with being the preferred of the baronet, she said
she believed he did like her, and for her part she liked him. She had
never thought a man of rank--the only son of a proud, fond mother, the
only brother of doting sisters--could have so much goodness, and, on the
whole, so much sense.

Time proved, indeed, that Sir Philip liked her. Perhaps he had found