. Write to the lad, I say, and tell him to come home. He
is a finer gentleman than this bit of a baronet, after all.«
    »Does it not strike you, Mr. Yorke, that for a mere penniless adventurer to
aspire to a rich woman's hand is presumptuous - contemptible?«
    »Oh! if you are for high notions, and double-refined sentiment, I've naught
to say. I'm a plain, practical man myself; and if Robert is willing to give up
that royal prize to a lad-rival - a puling slip of aristocracy - I am quite
agreeable. At his age, in his place, with his inducements, I would have acted
differently. Neither baronet, nor duke, nor prince, should have snatched my
sweetheart from me without a struggle. But you tutors are such solemn chaps: it
is almost like speaking to a parson to consult with you.«
 
Flattered and fawned upon as Shirley was just now, it appeared she was not
absolutely spoiled - that her better nature did not quite leave her. Universal
report had indeed ceased to couple her name with that of Moore, and this silence
seemed sanctioned by her own apparent oblivion of the absentee; but that she had
not quite forgotten him - that she still regarded him, if not with love yet with
interest - seemed proved by the increased attention which at this juncture of
affairs a sudden attack of illness induced her to show that tutor-brother of
Robert's, to whom she habitually bore herself with strange alternations of cool
reserve and docile respect: now sweeping past him in all the dignity of the
monied heiress and prospective Lady Nunnely, and anon accosting him as abashed
school-girls are wont to accost their stern professors: bridling her neck of
ivory, and curling her lip of carmine, if he encountered her glance, one minute;
and the next submitting to the grave rebuke of his eye, with as much contrition
as if he had the power to inflict penalties in case of contumacy.
    Louis Moore had perhaps caught the fever, which for a few days laid him low,
in one of the poor cottages of the district, which he, his lame pupil, and Mr.
Hall, were in the habit of visiting together. At any rate he sickened, and after
opposing to the malady a taciturn resistance for a day or two, was obliged to
keep his chamber.
    He lay tossing on his thorny bed one evening, Henry, who would not quit him,
watching faithfully beside him, when a tap - too light
