Shirley

Mr. Moore would be glad to see you in the school-room and to hear you read a little French, if you have no more urgent occupation.«
    The messenger delivered his commission very simply, as if it were a mere matter of course.
    »Did Mr. Moore tell you to say that?«
    »Certainly: why not? And now, do come, and let us once more be as we were at Sympson-grove. We used to have pleasant school-hours in those days.«
    Miss Keeldar, perhaps, thought that circumstances were changed since then; however she made no remark, but after a little reflection quietly followed Henry.
    Entering the school-room, she inclined her head with a decent obeisance, as had been her wont in former times; she removed her bonnet, and hung it up beside Henry's cap. Louis Moore sat at his desk, turning the leaves of a book, open before him, and marking passages with his pencil; he just moved, in acknowledgment of her curtsey, but did not rise.
    »You proposed to read to me a few nights ago,« said he. »I could not hear you then; my attention is now at your service. A little renewed practice in French may not be unprofitable: your accent, I have observed, begins to rust.«
    »What book shall I take?«
    »Here are the posthumous works of St Pièrre. Read a few pages of the ›Fragments de l'Amazone.‹«
    She accepted the chair which he had placed in readiness near his own – the volume lay on his desk – there was but one between them; her sweeping curls drooped so low as to hide the page from him.
    »Put back your hair,« he said.
    For one moment, Shirley looked not quite certain whether she would obey the request or disregard it: a flicker of her eye beamed furtive on the professor's face; perhaps if he had been looking at her harshly or timidly, or if one undecided line had marked his countenance, she would have rebelled, and the lesson had ended there and then; but he was only awaiting her compliance – as calm as marble, and as cool. She threw the veil of tresses behind her ear. It was well her face owned an agreeable outline, and that her cheek possessed the polish and the roundness of early youth, or, thus robbed of a softening shade, the contours might have lost their grace. But what mattered that in the present society? Neither Calypso nor Eucharis cared to fascinate Mentor.
    She began to read. The language had become strange to her tongue; it faltered: the lecture flowed unevenly, impeded by hurried breath, broken by Anglicised tones. She stopped.
    »I can't do it. Read me a paragraph, if you please, Mr. Moore.«
    What
he
read,
she
repeated: she caught his accent in three minutes.
    »Très bien,« was the approving comment at the close of the piece.
    »C'est presque le Français rattrapé, n'est-ce pas?«
    »You could not write French as you once could, I dare-say –?«
    »Oh! no. I should make strange work of my concords now.«
    »You could not compose the devoir of ›La Première Femme Savante?‹«
    »Do you still remember that rubbish?«
    »Every line.«
    »I doubt you.«
    »I will engage to repeat it word for word.«
    »You would stop short at the first line.«
    »Challenge me to the experiment.«
    »I challenge you.«
    He proceeded to recite the following: he gave it in French, but we must translate, on pain of being unintelligible to some readers.
     
    »And it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.«
     
    This was in the dawn of time, before the morning stars were set, and while they yet sang together.
    The epoch is so remote, the mists and dewy grey of matin twilight veil it with so vague an obscurity, that all distinct feature of custom, all clear line of locality, evade perception and baffle research. It must suffice to know that the world then existed; that men peopled it; that man's nature, with its passions, sympathies, pains, and pleasures, informed the planet and gave it soul.
    A certain tribe colonized a certain spot on the globe; of what race this tribe – unknown: in what region that spot – untold. We usually think of the East when we refer to transactions of that date; but who shall declare that there was no life in the West, the South, the North? What is to disprove that this tribe, instead of camping under palm-groves in Asia, wandered beneath island oak-woods rooted in our own seas of Europe?
    It is no sandy plain, nor any