sponded, softly enough. Indeed
there was softness in her whole deportment--in her face, in her voice;
but there was also reserve, and an air fleeting, evanishing, intangible.

"'You certainly give me pain,' said I. 'It is hardly a week since you
called me your future husband and treated me as such. Now I am once more
the tutor for you. I am addressed as Mr. Moore and sir. Your lips have
forgotten Louis.'

"'No, Louis, no. It is an easy, liquid name--not soon forgotten.'

"'Be cordial to Louis, then; approach him--let him approach.'

"'I _am_ cordial,' said she, hovering aloof like a white shadow.

"'Your voice is very sweet and very low,' I answered, quietly advancing.
'You seem subdued, but still startled.'

"'No--quite calm, and afraid of nothing,' she assured me.

"'Of nothing but your votary.'

"I bent a knee to the flags at her feet.

"'You see I am in a new world, Mr. Moore. I don't know myself; I don't
know you. But rise. When you do so I feel troubled and disturbed.'

"I obeyed. It would not have suited me to retain that attitude long. I
courted serenity and confidence for her, and not vainly. She trusted and
clung to me again.

"'Now, Shirley,' I said, 'you can conceive I am far from happy in my
present uncertain, unsettled state.'

"'Oh yes, you _are_ happy!' she cried hastily. 'You don't know how happy
you are. Any change will be for the worse.'

"'Happy or not, I cannot bear to go on so much longer. You are too
generous to require it.'

"'Be reasonable, Louis; be patient! I like you because you are patient.'

"'Like me no longer, then; love me instead. Fix our marriage day; think
of it to-night, and decide.'

"She breathed a murmur, inarticulate yet expressive; darted, or melted,
from my arms--and I lost her."

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE WINDING-UP.

Yes, reader, we must settle accounts now. I have only briefly to narrate
the final fates of some of the personages whose acquaintance we have
made in this narrative, and then you and I must shake hands, and for the
present separate.

Let us turn to the curates--to the much-loved, though long-neglected.
Come forward, modest merit! Malone, I see, promptly answers the
invocation. He knows his own description when he hears it.

No, Peter Augustus; we can have nothing to say to you. It won't do.
Impossible to trust ourselves with the touching tale of your deeds and
destinies. Are you not aware, Peter, that a discriminating public has
its