ou approve what I have done, Harry?' I could not answer. My
tears choked me, as they do now."

Mr. Moore allowed his pupil a moment to contend with and master his
emotion. He then demanded, "What else did she say?"

"When I had signified my full consent to the conditions of her will, she
told me I was a generous boy, and she was proud of me. 'And now,' she
added, 'in case anything should happen, you will know what to say to
Malice when she comes whispering hard things in your ear, insinuating
that Shirley has wronged you, that she did not love you. You will know
that I _did_ love you, Harry; that no sister could have loved you
better--my own treasure.' Mr. Moore, sir, when I remember her voice, and
recall her look, my heart beats as if it would break its strings. She
_may_ go to heaven before me--if God commands it, she _must_; but the
rest of my life--and my life will not be long, I am glad of that
now--shall be a straight, quick, thoughtful journey in the path her step
has pressed. I thought to enter the vault of the Keeldars before her.
Should it be otherwise, lay my coffin by Shirley's side."

Moore answered him with a weighty calm, that offered a strange contrast
to the boy's perturbed enthusiasm.

"You are wrong, both of you--you harm each other. If youth once falls
under the influence of a shadowy terror, it imagines there will never be
full sunlight again; its first calamity it fancies will last a lifetime.
What more did she say? Anything more?"

"We settled one or two family points between ourselves."

"I should rather like to know what----"

"But, Mr. Moore, you smile. _I_ could not smile to see Shirley in such a
mood."

"My boy, I am neither nervous, nor poetic, nor inexperienced. I see
things as they are; you don't as yet. Tell me these family points."

"Only, sir, she asked me whether I considered myself most of a Keeldar
or a Sympson; and I answered I was Keeldar to the core of the heart and
to the marrow of the bones. She said she was glad of it; for, besides
her, I was the only Keeldar left in England. And then we agreed on some
matters."

"Well?"

"Well, sir, that if I lived to inherit my father's estate, and her
house, I was to take the name of Keeldar, and to make Fieldhead my
residence. Henry Shirley Keeldar I said I would be called; and I will.
Her name and her manor house are ages old, and Sympson and Sympson Grove
are of yesterday."

"Come, you are neither of you going to heaven yet