ll my own."

It is Louis who is once more speaking to Shirley in the schoolroom.

"For the first time, Shirley, I stand before you--myself. I fling off
the tutor and introduce you to the man. My pupil."

"My master," was the low answer.

"I have to tell you that for five years you have been growing into your
tutor's heart, and that you are rooted there now. I have to declare that
you have bewitched me, in spite of sense and experience, and difference
of station and estate, and that I love you with all my life and
strength."

"Dear Louis, be faithful to me; never leave me. I don't care for life
unless I pass it at your side." She looked up with a sweet, open,
earnest countenance. "Teach me and help me to be good. Show me how to
sustain my part. Your judgment is well-balanced; your heart is kind; I
know you are wise. Be my companion through life, my guide where I am
ignorant, my master where I am faulty."

The Orders in Council are repealed, the blockaded ports are thrown open,
and the ringers in Briarfield belfry crack a bell that remains dissonant
to this day. Caroline Helstone is in the garden listening to this call
to be gay when a hand steals quietly round her waist.

"Caroline," says a manly voice. "I have sought you for an audience. The
repeal of the Orders in Council saves me. Now I shall not turn bankrupt,
now I shall be no longer poor, now I can pay my debts; now all the cloth
I have in my warehouses will be taken off my hands. This day lays my
fortune on a foundation on which for the first time I can securely
build."

"Your heavy difficulties are lifted?"

"They are lifted; I breathe; I can act. Now I can take more workmen,
give better wages, be less selfish. Now, Caroline, I can have a home
that is truly mine, and seek a wife. Will Caroline forget all I have
made her suffer; forget my poor ambition; my sordid schemes? Will she
let me prove I can love faithfully? Is Caroline mine?"

His hand was in hers still, and a gentle pressure answered him,
"Caroline is yours."

"I love you, Robert," she said simply, and mutely offered a kiss, an
offer of which he took unfair advantage.

* * * * *

Villette

Villette is Brussels, and the experiences of the heroine,
Lucy Snowe, in travelling thither and teaching there are based
on the journeys and the life of Charlotte Bronte when she was
a teacher in the Pensionnat Heger. The principal characters i