Shirley probably got on pleasantly with Sir Philip that evening, for the next morning she came down in one of her best moods.  
"Who will take a walk with me?" she asked, after breakfast. "Isabella and Gertrude, will you?"
 
So rare was such an invitation from Miss Keeldar to her female cousins that they hesitated before they accepted it. Their mamma, however, signifying in the project, they fetched their , and the trio set out.
 
It did not suit these three young persons to be thrown much together. Miss Keeldar liked the society of few ladies; indeed, she had a cordial pleasure in that of none except Mrs. Pryor and Caroline Helstone. She was civil, kind, even to her cousins; but still she usually had little to say to them. In the sunny mood of this particular morning, she to entertain even the Misses Sympson. Without from her wonted rule of discussing with them only ordinary themes, she imparted to these themes an extraordinary interest; the sparkle of her spirit glanced along her phrases.
 
What made her so ? All the cause must have been in herself. The day was not bright. It was dim—a pale, autumn day. The walks through the dun woods were damp; the atmosphere was heavy, the sky ; and yet it seemed that in Shirley's heart lived all the light and of Italy, as all its fervour laughed in her gray English eye.
 
Some directions necessary to be given to her foreman, John, delayed her behind her cousins as they neared Fieldhead on their return. Perhaps an of twenty minutes elapsed between her separation from them and her re-entrance into the house. In the meantime she had spoken to John, and then she had lingered in the lane at the434 gate. A summons to called her in. She excused herself from the meal, and went upstairs.
 
"Is not Shirley coming to luncheon?" asked Isabella. "She said she was hungry."
 
An hour after, as she did not quit her , one of her cousins went to seek her there. She was found sitting at the foot of the bed, her head resting on her hand; she looked quite pale, very thoughtful, almost sad.
 
"You are not ill?" was the question put.
 
"A little sick," replied Miss Keeldar.
 
Certainly she was not a little changed from what she had been two hours before.
 
This change, accounted for only by those three words, explained no otherwise; this change—whencesoever springing, effected in a brief ten minutes—passed like no light summer cloud. She talked when she joined her friends at dinner, talked as usual. She remained with them during the evening. When again questioned respecting her health, she declared herself recovered. It had been a passing faintness, a sensation, not worth a thought; yet it was felt there was a difference in Shirley.
 
The next day—the day, the week, the fortnight after—this new and shadow lingered on the , in the manner of Miss Keeldar. A strange quietude settled over her look, her movements, her very voice. The was not so marked as to court or permit frequent questioning, yet it was there, and it would not pass away. It hung over her like a cloud which no breeze could stir or . Soon it became evident that to notice this change was to annoy her. First she shrank from remark; and, if persisted in, she, with her own peculiar , it. "Was she ill?" The reply came with decision.
 
"I am not."
 
"Did anything weigh on her mind? Had anything happened to affect her spirits?"
 
She scornfully the idea. "What did they mean by spirits? She had no spirits, black or white, blue or gray, to affect."
 
"Something must be the matter—she was so altered."
 
"She supposed she had a right to alter at her ease. She knew she was plainer. If it suited her to grow ugly, why need others themselves on the subject?"
 
"There must be a cause for the change. What was it?"
 
435She requested to be let alone.
 
Then she would make every effort to appear quite gay, and she seemed indignant at herself that she could not perfectly succeed. Brief self-spurning burst from her lips when alone. "Fool! coward!" she would term herself. "!" she would say, "if you must tremble, tremble in secret! where no eye sees you!"
 
"How dare you," she would ask herself—"how dare you show your weakness and betray your imbecile anxieties? Shake them off; rise above them. If you cannot do this, hide them."
 
And to hide them she did her best. She once more became lively in company. When weary of effort and forced to relax, she sought —not the solitude of her chamber (she refused to mope, shut up between four walls), but that wilder solitude which lies out of doors, and which she could chase, mounted on Zoë, her . She took long rides of half a day. Her uncle , but he dared not . It was never pleasant to face Shirley's anger, even when she was healthy and gay; but now that her face showed thin, and her large eye looked hollow, there was something in the darkening of that face and of that eye which touched as well as alarmed.
 
To all comparative strangers who, unconscious of the in her spirits, commented on the alteration in her looks, she had one reply,—
 
"I am perfectly well; I have not an ."
 
And health, indeed, she must have had, to be able to bear the exposure to the weather she now encountered. Wet or fair, calm or storm, she took her daily ride over Stilbro' , Tartar keeping up at her side, with his wolf-like , long and untiring.
 
Twice, three times, the eyes of gossips—those eyes which are everywhere, in the closet and on the hill-top—noticed that instead of turning on Rushedge, the top of Stilbro' Moor, she rode forwards all the way to the town. were not wanting to mark her destination there. It was that she alighted at the door of one Mr. Pearson Hall, a , related to the vicar of Nunnely. This gentleman and his ancestors had been the agents of the Keeldar family for generations back. Some people affirmed that Miss Keeldar was become involved in business connected with Hollow's Mill—that she had lost money,436 and was to mortgage her land. Others that she was going to be married, and that the settlements were preparing.
 
Mr. Moore and Henry Sympson were together in the schoolroom. The tutor was waiting for a lesson which the pupil seemed busy in preparing.
 
"Henry, make haste. The afternoon is getting on."
 
"Is it, sir?"
 
"Certainly. Are you nearly ready with that lesson?"
 
"No."
 
"Not nearly ready?"
 
"I have not a line."
 
Mr. Moore looked up. The boy's tone was rather peculiar.
 
"The task presents no difficulties, Henry; or, if it does, bring them to me. We will work together."
 
"Mr. Moore, I can do no work."
 
"My boy, you are ill."
 
"Sir, I am not worse in bodily health than usual, but my heart is full."
 
"Shut the book. Come hither, . Come to the fireside."
 
Harry limped forward. His tutor placed him in a chair; his lips were quivering, his eyes brimming. He laid his on the floor, down his head, and wept.
 
"This is not occasioned by physical pain, you say, Harry? You have a grief; tell it me."
 
"Sir, I have such a grief as I never had before. I wish it could be relieved in some way; I can hardly bear it."
 
"Who knows but, if we talk it over, we may relieve it? What is the cause? Whom does it concern?"
 
"The cause, sir, is Shirley; it concerns Shirley."
 
"Does it? You think her changed?"
 
"All who know her think her changed—you too, Mr. Moore."
 
"Not seriously—no. I see no alteration but such as a turn might repair in a few weeks; besides, her own word must go for something: she says she is well."
 
"There it is, sir. As long as she maintained she was well, I believed her. When I was sad out of her sight, I soon recovered spirits in her presence. Now——"
 
"Well, Harry, now. Has she said anything to you? You and she were together in the garden two hours this437 morning. I saw her talking, and you listening. Now, my dear Harry, if Miss Keeldar has said she is ill, and you to keep her secret, do not obey her. For her life's sake, everything. Speak, my boy."
 
"She say she is ill! I believe, sir, if she were dying, she would smile, and , 'Nothing me.'"
 
"What have you learned then? What new circumstance?"
 
"I have learned that she has just made her will."
 
"Made her will?"
 
The tutor and pupil were silent.
 
"She told you that?" asked Moore, when some minutes had elapsed.
 
"She told me quite cheerfully, not as an circumstance, which I felt it to be. She said I was the only person besides her solicitor, Pearson Hall, and Mr. Helstone and Mr. Yorke, who knew anything about it; and to me, she intimated, she wished to explain its provisions."
 
"Go on, Harry."
 
"'Because,' she said, looking down on me with her beautiful eyes—oh! they are beautiful, Mr. Moore! I love them! I love her! She is my star! Heaven must not claim her! She is lovely in this world, and fitted for this world. Shirley is not an angel; she is a woman, and she shall live with men. Seraphs shall not have her! Mr. Moore, if one of the 'sons of God,' with wings wide and bright as the sky, blue and sounding as the sea, having seen that she was fair, to claim her, his claim should be withstood—withstood by me—boy and cripple as I am."
 
"Henry Sympson, go on, when I tell you."
 
"'Because,' she said, 'if I made no will, and died before you, Harry, all my property would go to you; and I do not intend that it should be so, though your father would like it. But you,' she said, 'will have his whole estate, which is large—larger than Fieldhead. Your sisters will have nothing; so I have left them some money, though I do not love them, both together, half so much as I love one lock of your fair hair.' She said these words, and she called me her 'darling,' and let me kiss her. She went on to tell me that she had left Caroline Helstone some money too; that this house, with its furniture and books, she had bequeathed to me, as she did not choose to take the old family place from her own blood; and that all the rest of438 her property, amounting to about twelve thousand pounds, exclusive of the to my sisters and Miss Helstone, she had willed, not to me, seeing I was already rich, but to a good man, who would make the best use of it that any human being could do—a man, she said, that was both gentle and brave, strong and merciful—a man that might not to be , but she knew he had the secret of religion pure and undefiled before God. The spirit of love and peace was with him. He visited the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and kept himself unspotted from the world. Then she asked, 'Do you 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 when she comes whispering hard things in your ear, 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 . 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 of the Keeldars before her. Should it be otherwise, lay my by Shirley's side."
 
Moore answered him with a weighty calm, that offered a strange contrast to the boy's 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 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."
 
439"My boy, I am neither nervous, nor , 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 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 are of yesterday."
 
"Come, you are neither of you going to heaven yet. 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 to her rides."
 
"You remember, Mr. Moore, how wet and stormy it was last Wednesday—so wild, indeed, that she would not permit Zoë to be saddled? Yet the blast she thought too 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, and440 so pass off like other .' 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 from lessons."
 
He departed. Mr. Moore, left alone, rose from his desk.
 
"I can be very cool and very with Henry," he said. "I can seem to make light of his , and look down du haut de ma 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 rôle with her. I have known the moment when I seemed about to forget it, when Confusion and seemed about to crush me with their soft tyranny, when my tongue , and I have almost let the drop, and stood in her presence, not master—no—but something else. I trust I shall never so play the fool. It is well for a Sir Philip Nunnely to redden when he meets her eye. He may permit himself the indulgence of submission. He may even, without disgrace, suffer his hand to tremble when it touches hers; but if one of her farmers were to show himself and , he would merely prove his need of a strait waistcoat. So far I have always done very well. She has sat near me, and I have not shaken—more than my desk. I have encountered her looks and smiles like—why, like a tutor, as I am. Her hand I never yet touched—never underwent that test. Her farmer or her footman I am not—no serf nor servant of hers have I ever been; but I am poor, and it behoves me to look to my self-respect—not to compromise an inch of it. What did she mean by that to the cold people who flesh to marble?441 It pleased me—I hardly know why; I would not permit myself to inquire. I never do indulge in either of her language or countenance; for if I did, I should sometimes forget common sense and believe in romance. A strange, secret steals through my at moments. I'll not encourage—I'll not remember it. I am resolved, as long as may be, to retain the right to say with Paul, 'I am not mad, but speak the words of truth and soberness.'"
 
He paused, listening.
 
"Will she come, or will she not come?" he inquired. "How will she take the message? Naïvely or disdainfully? Like a child or like a queen? Both characters are in her nature.
 
"If she comes, what shall I say to her? How account, firstly, for the freedom of the request? Shall I apologize to her? I could in all ; but would an apology tend to place us in the positions we ought to occupy in this matter? I must keep up the professor, otherwise—— I hear a door."
 
He waited. Many minutes passed.
 
"She will refuse me. Henry is her to come; she declines. My petition is in her eyes. Let her only come, I can teach her to the contrary. I would rather she were a little ; it will steel me. I prefer her cuirassed in pride, armed with a . Her scorn startles me from my dreams; I stand up myself. A from her eyes or lips puts strength into every nerve and sinew I have. Some step approaches, and not Henry's."
 
The door unclosed; Miss Keeldar came in. The message, it appeared, had found her at her needle; she brought her work in her hand. That day she had not been riding out; she had evidently passed it quietly. She wore her neat indoor dress and silk . This was no Thalestris from the fields, but a quiet domestic character from the fireside. Mr. Moore had her at advantage. He should have addressed her at once in solemn accents, and with . Perhaps he would, had she looked ; but her air never showed less of crânerie. A soft kind of youthful shyness her and on her cheek. The tutor stood silent.
 
She made a full stop between the door and his desk.
 
"Did you want me, sir?" she asked.
 
442"I ventured, Miss Keeldar, to send for you—that is, to ask an interview of a few minutes."
 
She waited; she her needle.
 
"Well, sir" (not lifting her eyes), "what about?"
 
"Be seated first. The subject I would is one of some moment. Perhaps I have hardly a right to approach it. It is possible I ought to frame an apology; it is possible no apology can excuse me. The liberty I have taken arises from a conversation with Henry. The boy is unhappy about your health; all your friends are unhappy on that subject. It is of your health I would speak."
 
"I am quite well," she said .
 
"Yet changed."
 
"That matters to none but myself. We all change."
 
"Will you sit down? , Miss Keeldar, I had some influence with you: have I any now? May I feel that what I am saying is not accounted positive presumption?"
 
"Let me read some French, Mr. Moore, or I will even take a spell at the Latin grammar, and let us proclaim a to all discussions."
 
"No, no. It is time there were discussions."
 
"Discuss away, then, but do not choose me for your text. I am a healthy subject."
 
"Do you not think it wrong to affirm and reaffirm what is substantially untrue?"
 
"I say I am well. I have neither cough, pain, nor fever."
 
"Is there no in that assertion? Is it the direct truth?"
 
"The direct truth."
 
Louis Moore looked at her earnestly.
 
"I can myself," he said, "trace no indications of actual disease. But why, then, are you altered?"
 
"Am I altered?"
 
"We will try. We will seek a proof."
 
"How?"
 
"I ask, in the first place, do you sleep as you used to?"
 
"I do not; but it is not because I am ill."
 
"Hav............