it be denounced and chained up.

Henry Sympson, the only son and youngest child of the family, was a boy
of fifteen. He generally kept with his tutor. When he left him, he
sought his cousin Shirley. This boy differed from his sisters. He was
little, lame, and pale; his large eyes shone somewhat languidly in a wan
orbit. They were, indeed, usually rather dim, but they were capable of
illumination. At times they could not only shine, but blaze. Inward
emotion could likewise give colour to his cheek and decision to his
crippled movements. Henry's mother loved him; she thought his
peculiarities were a mark of election. He was not like other children,
she allowed. She believed him regenerate--a new Samuel--called of God
from his birth. He was to be a clergyman. Mr. and the Misses Sympson,
not understanding the youth, let him much alone. Shirley made him her
pet, and he made Shirley his playmate.

In the midst of this family circle, or rather outside it, moved the
tutor--the satellite.

Yes, Louis Moore was a satellite of the house of Sympson--connected, yet
apart; ever attendant, ever distant. Each member of that correct family
treated him with proper dignity. The father was austerely civil,
sometimes irritable; the mother, being a kind woman, was attentive, but
formal; the daughters saw in him an abstraction, not a man. It seemed,
by their manner, that their brother's tutor did not live for them. They
were learned; so was he--but not for them. They were accomplished; he
had talents too, imperceptible to their senses. The most spirited sketch
from his fingers was a blank to their eyes; the most original
observation from his lips fell unheard on their ears. Nothing could
exceed the propriety of their behaviour.

I should have said nothing could have equalled it; but I remember a fact
which strangely astonished Caroline Helstone. It was--to discover that
her cousin had absolutely _no_ sympathizing friend at Fieldhead; that to
Miss Keeldar he was as much a mere teacher, as little a gentleman, as
little a man, as to the estimable Misses Sympson.

What had befallen the kind-hearted Shirley that she should be so
indifferent to the dreary position of a fellow-creature thus isolated
under her roof? She was not, perhaps, haughty to him, but she never
noticed him--she let him alone. He came and went, spoke or was silent,
and she rarely recognized his existence.

As to Louis Moore himself, he had the air of a man used to this lif