She scornfully ridiculed 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 fret themselves on the subject?’

‘There must be a cause for the change—what was it?’

She peremptorily 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 epithets burst from her lips when alone. ‘Fool! Coward!’ she would term herself. ‘Poltroon!’ she would say; ‘if you must tremble—tremble in secret! Quail 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 resolutely lively in company. When weary of effort, and forced to relax, she sought solitude—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 mare. She took long rides of half a day. Her uncle disapproved, but he dared not remonstrate; 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 kindling of that eye which touched as well as alarmed.

To all comparative strangers who, unconscious of the alterations in her spirits, commented on the alteration in her looks, she had one reply:

‘I am perfectly well: I have not an ailment.’

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’ Moor, Tartar keeping up at her side, with his wolf-like gallop, 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 ridge of Stilbro’ Moor, she rode forwards all the way to the town. Scouts were not wanting to mark her destination there; it was ascertained that she alighted at the door of one Mr. Pearson Hall, a solicitor, 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 speculations connected with Hollow’s Mill; that she had lost money, and was constrained to mortgage her land: others conjectured 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?’