Shirley

fetters the dead to the living. In his realm there is hatred – secret hatred: there is disgust – unspoken disgust: there is treachery – family treachery: there is vice – deep, deadly, domestic vice. In his dominions, children grow unloving between parents who have never loved: infants are nursed on deception from their very birth; they are reared in an atmosphere corrupt with lies. Your god rules at the bridal of kings – look at your royal dynasties! your deity is the deity of foreign aristocracies – analyze the blue blood of Spain! Your god is the Hymen of France – what is French domestic life? All that surrounds him hastens to decay: all declines and degenerates under his sceptre.
Your
god is a masked Death.«
    »This language is terrible! My daughters and you must associate no longer, Miss Keeldar: there is danger in such companionship. Had I known you a little earlier – but, extraordinary as I thought you, I could not have believed –«
    »Now, sir, do you begin to be aware that it is useless to scheme for me? That, in doing so, you but sow the wind to reap the whirlwind? I sweep your cobweb-projects from my path, that I may pass on unsullied. I am anchored on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience shall dispose of my hand –
they only.
Know this at last.«
    Mr. Sympson was becoming a little bewildered.
    »Never heard such language!« he muttered again and again. »Never was so addressed in my life – never was so used.«
    »You are quite confused, sir. You had better withdraw, or I will.«
    He rose hastily.
    »We must leave this place: they must pack up at once.«
    »Do not hurry my aunt and cousins: give them time.«
    »No more intercourse: she's not proper.«
    He made his way to the door; he came back for his handkerchief; he dropped his snuff-box: leaving the contents scattered on the carpet, he stumbled out: Tartar lay outside across the mat – Mr. Sympson almost fell over him: in the climax of his exasperation he hurled an oath at the dog, and a coarse epithet at his mistress.
    »Poor Mr. Sympson! He is both feeble and vulgar,« said Shirley to herself. »My head aches, and I am tired,« she added; and leaning her head upon a cushion, she softly subsided from excitement to repose. One, entering the room a quarter of an hour afterwards, found her asleep. When Shirley had been agitated, she generally took this natural refreshment: it would come at her call.
    The intruder paused in her unconscious presence, and said – »Miss Keeldar.«
    Perhaps his voice harmonized with some dream into which she was passing – it did not startle, it hardly roused her: without opening her eyes, she but turned her head a little, so that her cheek and profile, before hidden by her arm, became visible: she looked rosy, happy, half-smiling, but her eyelashes were wet: she had wept in slumber; or perhaps, before dropping asleep, a few natural tears had fallen after she had heard that epithet: no man – no woman is always strong, always able to bear up against the unjust opinion – the vilifying word: calumny, even from the mouth of a fool, will sometimes cut into unguarded feelings. Shirley looked like a child that had been naughty and punished, but was now forgiven and at rest.
    »Miss Keeldar,« again said the voice: this time it woke her; she looked up and saw at her side Louis Moore – not close at her side, but standing, with arrested step, two or three yards from her.
    »Oh, Mr. Moore!« she said; »I was afraid it was my uncle again: he and I have quarrelled.«
    »Mr. Sympson should let you alone,« was the reply: »can he not see that you are as yet far from strong?«
    »I assure you he did not find me weak: I did not cry when he was here.«
    »He is about to evacuate Fieldhead – so he says. He is now giving orders to his family: he has been in the schoolroom issuing commands in a manner which, I suppose, was a continuation of that with which he has harassed you.«
    »Are you and Henry to go?«
    »I believe, as far as Henry is concerned, that was the tenor of his scarcely-intelligible directions; but he may change all to-morrow: he is just in that mood when you cannot depend on his consistency for two consecutive hours: I doubt whether he will leave you for weeks yet. To myself he addressed some words which will require a little attention and comment by-and-by, when I have time to bestow on them. At the moment he came in, I was busied with a note I had got from Mr. Yorke – so fully