Shirley

always invokes this idol.
    ›Come forward, uncle: you shall hear all. Tell him all, Louis.‹
    ›I dare him to speak! The beggar! the knave! the specious hypocrite! the vile, insinuating, infamous menial! Stand apart from my niece, sir: let her go!‹
    She clung to me with energy. ›I am near my future husband,‹ she said: ›who dares touch him or me?‹
    ›Her husband!‹ he raised and spread his hands: he dropped into a seat.
    ›A while ago, you wanted much to know whom I meant to marry: my intention was then formed, but not mature for communication; now it is ripe, sun-mellowed, perfect: take the crimson-peach – take Louis Moore!‹
    ›But‹ (savagely) ›you
shall not
have him – he
shall not
have you.‹
    ›I would die before I would have another. I would die if I might not have him.‹
    He uttered words with which this page shall never be polluted.
    She turned white as death: she shook all over: she lost her strength. I laid her down on the sofa; just looked to ascertain that she had not fainted – of which, with a divine smile, she assured me; I kissed her, and then, if I were to perish, I cannot give a clear account of what happened in the course of the next five minutes: she has since – through tears, laughter, and trembling – told me that I turned terrible, and gave myself to the demon; she says I left her, made one bound across the room – that Mr. Sympson vanished through the door as if shot from a cannon – I also vanished, and she heard Mrs. Gill scream.
    Mrs. Gill was still screaming when I came to my senses: I was then in another apartment – the oak-parlour, I think: I held Sympson before me crushed into a chair, and my hand was on his cravat: his eyes rolled in his head – I was strangling him, I think: the housekeeper stood wringing her hands, entreating me to desist: I desisted that moment, and felt at once as cool as stone. But I told Mrs. Gill to fetch the Red-House Inn chaise instantly, and informed Mr. Sympson he must depart from Fieldhead the instant it came: though half-frightened out of his wits, he declared he would not. Repeating the former order, I added a commission to fetch a constable. I said: –
    ›You
shall
go – by fair means or foul.‹
    He threatened prosecution – I cared for nothing: I had stood over him once before, not quite so fiercely as now, but full as austerely. It was one night when burglars attempted the house at Sympson-Grove; and in his wretched cowardice he would have given a vain alarm, without daring to offer defence: I had then been obliged to protect his family and his abode by mastering himself – and I had succeeded. I now remained with him till the chaise came: I marshalled him to it, he scolding all the way. He was terribly bewildered, as well as enraged; he would have resisted me, but knew not how: he called for his wife and daughters to come. I said they should follow him as soon as they could prepare: the smoke, the fume, the fret of his demeanour was inexpressible, but it was a fury incapable of producing a deed: that man, properly handled, must ever remain impotent. I know he will never touch me with the law: I know his wife, over whom he tyrannizes in trifles, guides him in matters of importance. I have long since earned her undying mother's gratitude by my devotion to her boy: in some of Henry's ailments I have nursed him – better, she said, than any woman could nurse: she will never forget that. She and her daughters quitted me to-day, in mute wrath and consternation – but she respects me. When Henry clung to my neck, as I lifted him into the carriage and placed him by her side – when I arranged her own wrapping to make her warm, though she turned her head from me, I saw the tears start to her eyes. She will but the more zealously advocate my cause, because she has left me in anger. I am glad of this: not for my own sake, but for that of my life and idol – my Shirley.«
    Once again he writes – a week after: –
    »I am now at Stilbro': I have taken up my temporary abode with a friend – a professional man – in whose business I can be useful. Every day I ride over to Fieldhead. How long will it be before I can call that place my home, and its mistress mine? I am not easy – not tranquil: I am tantalized – sometimes tortured. To see her now, one would think she had never pressed her cheek to my shoulder, or clung to me with tenderness or trust. I feel unsafe: she renders me miserable: I am shunned when I visit