she looked rosy, happy, half-smiling, but her eye-lashes were wet: she had wept in slumber; or perhaps, before dropping asleep, a few natural tears had fallen after she had heard that epithet: no man—no woman is always strong, always able to bear up against the unjust opinion—the vilifying word: calumny, even from the mouth of a fool, will sometimes cut into unguarded feelings. Shirley looked like a child that had been naughty and punished, but was now forgiven and at rest.
"Miss Keeldar," again said the voice: this time it woke her; she looked up and saw at her side Louis Moore—not close at her side, but standing, with arrested step, two or three yards from her.
"Oh, Mr. Moore!" she said; "I was afraid it was my uncle again: he and I have quarrelled."
"Mr. Sympson should let you alone," was the reply: "can he not see that you are as yet far from strong?"
"I assure you he did not find me weak: I did not cry when he was here."
"He is about to evacuate Fieldhead—so he says. He is now giving orders to his family: he has been in the schoolroom issuing commands in a manner which, I suppose, was a continuation of that with which he has harassed you."
"Are you and Henry to go?"
"I believe, as far as Henry is concerned, that was the tenor of his scarcely-intelligible directions; but he may change all to-morrow: he is just in that mood when you cannot depend on his consistency for two consecutive hours: I doubt whether he will leave
