Shirley

with fleshless arm the portals of Eternity, how Genius still held close his dying bride, sustained her through the agony of the passage, bore her triumphant into his own home – Heaven; restored her, redeemed, to Jehovah – her Maker; and at last, before Angel and Archangel, crowned her with the crown of Immortality?
    Who shall, of these things, write the chronicle?
     
    »I never could correct that composition,« observed Shirley, as Moore concluded. »Your censor-pencil scored it with condemnatory lines, whose signification I strove vainly to fathom.«
    She had taken a crayon from the tutor's desk, and was drawing little leaves, fragments of pillars, broken crosses, on the margin of the book.
    »French may be half-forgotten, but the habits of the French lesson are retained, I see,« said Louis: »my books would now, as erst, be unsafe with you. My newly-bound St Pièrre would soon be like my Racine: Miss Keeldar, her mark – traced on every page.«
    Shirley dropped her crayon as if it burned her fingers.
    »Tell me what were the faults of that devoir?« she asked. »Were they grammatical errors, or did you object to the substance?«
    »I never said that the lines I drew were indications of faults at all. You would have it that such was the case, and I refrained from contradiction.«
    »What else did they denote?«
    »No matter now.«
    »Mr. Moore,« cried Henry, »make Shirley repeat some of the pieces she used to say so well by heart.«
    »If I ask for any, it will be ›Le Cheval Dompté,‹« said Moore, trimming with his penknife the pencil Miss Keeldar had worn to a stump.
    She turned aside her head; the neck, the clear cheek, forsaken by their natural veil, were seen to flush warm.
    »Ah! she has not forgotten, you see, sir,« said Henry, exultant. »She knows how naughty she was.«
    A smile, which Shirley would not permit to expand, made her lip tremble; she bent her face, and hid it half with her arms half in her curls, which, as she stooped, fell loose again.
    »Certainly, I was a rebel!« she answered.
    »A rebel!« repeated Henry. »Yes: you and papa had quarrelled terribly, and you set both him and mamma, and Mrs. Pryor, and everybody, at defiance: you said he had insulted you –«
    »He
had
insulted me,« interposed Shirley.
    »And you wanted to leave Sympson Grove directly. You packed your things up, and papa threw them out of your trunk; mamma cried – Mrs. Pryor cried; they both stood wringing their hands begging you to be patient, and you knelt on the floor with your things and your upturned box before you, looking, Shirley – looking – why, in one of
your
passions. Your features, in such passions, are not distorted; they are fixed, but quite beautiful: you scarcely look angry, only resolute, and in a certain haste; yet one feels that, at such times, an obstacle cast across your path would be split as with lightning. Papa lost heart, and called Mr. Moore.«
    »Enough, Henry.«
    »No: it is not enough. I hardly know how Mr. Moore managed, except that I recollect he suggested to papa that agitation would bring on his gout; and that he spoke quietly to the ladies, and got them away; and afterwards he said to you, Miss Shirley, that it was of no use talking or lecturing now, but that the tea-things were just brought into the school-room, and he was very thirsty, and he would be glad if you would leave your packing for the present and come and make a cup of tea for him and me. You came: you would not talk at first; but soon you softened and grew cheerful. Mr. Moore began to tell us about the Continent, the war, and Buonaparte; subjects we were both fond of listening to. After tea he said we should neither of us leave him that evening: he would not let us stray out of his sight, lest we should again get into mischief. We sat one on each side of him: we were so happy. I never passed so pleasant an evening. The next day he gave you, missy, a lecture of an hour, and wound it up by marking you a piece to learn in Bossuet as a punishment-lesson, – ›Le Cheval Dompté.‹ You learned it instead of packing up, Shirley. We heard no more of your running away. Mr. Moore used to tease you on the subject for a year afterwards.«
    »She never said a lesson with greater spirit,« subjoined Moore. »She then, for the first time, gave me the treat of hearing my native tongue spoken without accent by an English girl.«
    »She was as sweet as summer-cherries for a month afterwards,« struck in Henry: »a good