he has changed her
decent widow's weeds for masculine disguise. The figure walking at Miss
Keeldar's side is a man--a tall, young, stately man; it is her tenant,
Robert Moore.

The pair speak softly; their words are not distinguishable. To remain a
moment to gaze is not to be an eavesdropper; and as the moon shines so
clearly and their countenances are so distinctly apparent, who can
resist the attraction of such interest? Caroline, it seems, cannot, for
she lingers.

There was a time when, on summer nights, Moore had been wont to walk
with his cousin, as he was now walking with the heiress. Often had she
gone up the Hollow with him after sunset, to scent the freshness of the
earth, where a growth of fragrant herbage carpeted a certain narrow
terrace, edging a deep ravine, from whose rifted gloom was heard a sound
like the spirit of the lonely watercourse, moaning amongst its wet
stones, and between its weedy banks, and under its dark bower of alders.

"But I used to be closer to him," thought Caroline. "He felt no
obligation to treat me with homage; I needed only kindness. He used to
hold my hand; he does not touch hers. And yet Shirley is not proud where
she loves. There is no haughtiness in her aspect now, only a little in
her port--what is natural to and inseparable from her, what she retains
in her most careless as in her most guarded moments. Robert must think,
as I think, that he is at this instant looking down on a fine face; and
he must think it with a man's brain, not with mine. She has such
generous yet soft fire in her eyes. She smiles--what makes her smile so
sweet? I saw that Robert felt its beauty, and he must have felt it with
his man's heart, not with my dim woman's perceptions. They look to me
like two great happy spirits. Yonder silvered pavement reminds me of
that white shore we believe to be beyond the death-flood. They have
reached it; they walk there united. And what am I, standing here in
shadow, shrinking into concealment, my mind darker than my hiding-place?
I am one of this world, no spirit--a poor doomed mortal, who asks, in
ignorance and hopelessness, wherefore she was born, to what end she
lives; whose mind for ever runs on the question, how she shall at last
encounter, and by whom be sustained through death.

"This is the worst passage I have come to yet; still I was quite
prepared for it. I gave Robert up, and gave him up to Shirley, the first
day I heard she was come, the first momen