, a lecture of an hour, and wound it up
by marking you a piece to learn in Bossuet as a punishment-lesson, - Le Cheval
Dompté. You learned it instead of packing up, Shirley. We heard no more of your
running away. Mr. Moore used to tease you on the subject for a year afterwards.«
    »She never said a lesson with greater spirit,« subjoined Moore. »She then,
for the first time, gave me the treat of hearing my native tongue spoken without
accent by an English girl.«
    »She was as sweet as summer-cherries for a month afterwards,« struck in
Henry: »a good hearty quarrel always left Shirley's temper better than it found
it.«
    »You talk of me as if I were not present,« observed Miss Keeldar, who had
not yet lifted her face.
    »Are you sure you are present?« asked Moore: »there have been moments since
my arrival here, when I have been tempted to inquire of the lady of Fieldhead if
she knew what had become of my former pupil?«
    »She is here now.«
    »I see her, and humble enough; but I would neither advise Harry, nor others,
to believe too implicitly in the humility which one moment can hide its blushing
face like a modest little child, and the next lift it pale and lofty as a marble
Juno.«
    »One man in times of old, it is said, imparted vitality to the statue he had
chiselled. Others may have the contrary gift of turning life to stone.«
    Moore paused on this observation before he replied to it. His look, at once
struck and meditative, said, »A strange phrase: what may it mean?« He turned it
over in his mind, with thought deep and slow, as some German pondering
metaphysics.
    »You mean,« he said, at last, »that some men inspire repugnance, and so
chill the kind heart.«
    »Ingenious!« responded Shirley. »If the interpretation pleases you, you are
welcome to hold it valid. I do n't care.«
    And with that she raised her head, lofty in look, and statue-like in hue, as
Louis had described it.
    »Behold the metamorphosis!« he said: »scarce imagined ere it is realized: a
lowly nymph develops to an inaccessible goddess. But Henry must not be
disappointed of his recitation, and Olympia will deign to oblige him. Let us
begin.«
    »I have forgotten the very first