. I have the best hopes
of you both, with your proud distinctions--a pair of half-fledged
eaglets. Now, what is your inference from all you have told me? Put it
into words."

"That Shirley thinks she is going to die."

"She referred to her health?"

"Not once; but I assure you she is wasting. Her hands are grown quite
thin, and so is her cheek."

"Does she ever complain to your mother or sisters?"

"Never. She laughs at them when they question her. Mr. Moore, she is a
strange being, so fair and girlish--not a man-like woman at all, not an
Amazon, and yet lifting her head above both help and sympathy."

"Do you know where she is now, Henry? Is she in the house, or riding
out?"

"Surely not out, sir. It rains fast."

"True; which, however, is no guarantee that she is not at this moment
cantering over Rushedge. Of late she has never permitted weather to be a
hindrance to her rides."

"You remember, Mr. Moore, how wet and stormy it was last Wednesday--so
wild, indeed, that she would not permit Zoe to be saddled? Yet the blast
she thought too tempestuous for her mare she herself faced on foot; that
afternoon she walked nearly as far as Nunnely. I asked her, when she
came in, if she was not afraid of taking cold. 'Not I,' she said. 'It
would be too much good luck for me. I don't know, Harry, but the best
thing that could happen to me would be to take a good cold and fever,
and so pass off like other Christians.' She is reckless, you see, sir."

"Reckless indeed! Go and find out where she is, and if you can get an
opportunity of speaking to her without attracting attention, request her
to come here a minute."

"Yes, sir."

He snatched his crutch, and started up to go.

"Harry!"

He returned.

"Do not deliver the message formally. Word it as, in former days, you
would have worded an ordinary summons to the schoolroom."

"I see, sir. She will be more likely to obey."

"And, Harry----"

"Sir?"

"I will call you when I want you. Till then, you are dispensed from
lessons."

He departed. Mr. Moore, left alone, rose from his desk.

"I can be very cool and very supercilious with Henry," he said. "I can
seem to make light of his apprehensions, and look down _du haut de ma
grandeur_ on his youthful ardour. To _him_ I can speak as if, in my
eyes, they were both children. Let me see if I can keep up the same role
with her. I have known the moment when I seemed about to forget it, when
Confusion and Submission