It was after this talk that Moore was shot down by a concealed assassin.

V.—­Love Scenes

On the very night that Robert Moore arrived at his cottage in the Hollow, after being nursed back to life in the house of the neighbour who was with him when he was shot by a fanatical revolutionist, he scribbled a note to ask his cousin Caroline to call, as was her wont before the days of misunderstanding.

“Caroline, you look as if you had heard good tidings,” said Robert.  “What is the source of the sunshine I perceive about you?”

“For one thing, I am happy in mamma.  I love her more tenderly every day.  And I am glad you are better, and that we are friends.”

“Cary, I mean to tell you some day a thing about myself that is not to my credit.  I cannot bear that you should think better of me than I deserve.”

“But I believe I know all about it.  I inferred something, gathered more from rumour, and made out the rest by instinct.”

“I wanted to marry Shirley for the sake of her money, and she refused me scornfully; you needn’t prick your fingers with your needle, that is the plain truth—­and I had not an emotion of tenderness for her.”

“Then, Robert, it was very wicked in you to want to marry her.”

“And very mean, my little pastor; but, Cary, I had no love to give—­no heart that I could call my own.”

It is Louis who is once more speaking to Shirley in the schoolroom.

“For the first time, Shirley, I stand before you—­myself.  I fling off the tutor and introduce you to the man.  My pupil.”

“My master,” was the low answer.

“I have to tell you that for five years you have been growing into your tutor’s heart, and that you are rooted there now.  I have to declare that you have bewitched me, in spite of sense and experience, and difference of station and estate, and that I love you with all my life and strength.”

“Dear Louis, be faithful to me; never leave me.  I don’t care for life unless I pass it at your side.”  She looked up with a sweet, open, earnest countenance.  “Teach me and help me to be good.  Show me how to sustain my part.  Your judgment is well-balanced; your heart is kind; I know you are wise.  Be my companion through life, my guide where I am ignorant, my master where I am faulty.”

The Orders in Council are repealed, the blockaded ports are thrown open, and the ringers in Briarfield belfry crack a bell that remains dissonant to this day.  Caroline Helstone is in the garden listening to this call to be gay when a hand steals quietly round her waist.

“Caroline,” says a manly voice.  “I have sought you for an audience.  The repeal of the Orders in Council saves me.  Now I shall not turn bankrupt, now I shall be no longer poor, now I can pay my debts; now all the cloth I have in my warehouses will be taken off my hands.  This day lays my fortune on a foundation on which for the first time I can securely build.”