up in London for weeks together, and by the time he comes back he’ll find himself checkmated. Louis, “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; but, once let slip, never returns again.” I’d write to Robert, if I were you, and remind him of that.’

‘Robert had views on Miss Keeldar?’ inquired Louis, as if the idea were new to him.

‘Views I suggested to him myself, and views he might have realized, for she liked him.

‘As a neighbour?’

‘As more than that. I have seen her change countenance and colour at the mere mention of his name. Write to the lad, I say, and tell him to come home. He is a finer gentleman than this bit of a baronet, after all.’

‘Does it not strike you, Mr. Yorke, that for a mere penniless adventurer to aspire to a rich woman’s hand is presumptuous, contemptible?’

‘Oh, if you are for high notions and double-refined sentiment, I’ve naught to say. I’m a plain, practical man myself, and if Robert is willing to give up that royal prize to a lad-rival—a puling slip of aristocracy—I am quite agreeable. At his age, in his place, with his inducements, I would have acted differently. Neither Baronet, nor Duke, nor Prince should have snatched my sweetheart from me without a struggle. But you tutors are such solemn chaps; it is almost like speaking to a parson to consult with you.’

Flattered and fawned upon as Shirley was just now, it appeared she was not absolutely spoiled—that her better nature did not quite leave her. Universal report had indeed ceased to couple her name with that of Moore, and this silence seemed sanctioned by her own apparent oblivion of the absentee; but that she had not quite forgotten him—that she still regarded him, if not with love, yet with interest—seemed proved by the increased attention which at this juncture of affairs a sudden attack of illness induced her to show that tutor-brother of Robert’s, to whom she habitually bore herself with strange alternations of cool reserve and docile respect, now sweeping past him in all the dignity of the moneyed heiress and prospective Lady Nunnely, and anon accosting him as abashed schoolgirls are wont to accost their stern professors, bridling her neck of ivory, and curling her lip of carmine, if he encountered her glance, one minute, and the next submitting to the grave rebuke of his eye, with as much contrition as if he had the power to inflict penalties in case of contumacy.

Louis Moore had perhaps caught the fever, which for a few days laid him low, in one of the poor cottages of the district, which he, his lame pupil, and Mr. Hall, were in the habit of visiting together. At any rate, he sickened, and after opposing to the malady a taciturn resistance for a day or two, was obliged to keep his chamber.

He lay tossing on his thorny bed one evening, Henry, who would not quit him, watching faithfully beside him, when a tap—too light to be that of Mrs. Gill or the housemaid—summoned young Sympson to the door.

‘How is Mr. Moore to-night?’ asked a low voice from the dark gallery.

‘Come in and see him yourself.’

‘Is he asleep?’

‘I wish he could sleep. Come and speak to him, Shirley.’

‘He would not like it.’

But the speaker stepped in, and Henry, seeing her hesitate on the threshold, took her hand, and drew her to the couch.