# bib

id: chapter-001
title: chapter-001
txt: ./txt/chapter-001.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-001.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  Mrs. Gale hates Mr. Malone more than either of the other two; but she fears him also, for he is a tall, strongly-built personage, with real Irish legs and arms, and a face as genuinely national--not the Milesian face, not Daniel O''Connell''s style, but the high-featured, North-American-Indian sort of visage, which belongs to a certain class of the Irish gentry, and has a petrified and proud look, better suited to the owner of an estate of slaves than to the landlord of a free peasantry. Mr. Sweeting was bantered about his stature--he was a little man, a mere boy in height and breadth compared with the athletic Malone; rallied on his musical accomplishments--he played the flute and sang hymns like a seraph, some young ladies of his parish thought; sneered at as "the ladies'' pet;" teased about his mamma and sisters, for whom poor Mr. Sweeting had some lingering regard, and of whom he was foolish enough now and then to speak in the presence of the priestly Paddy, from whose anatomy the bowels of natural affection had somehow been omitted.


id: chapter-002
title: chapter-002
txt: ./txt/chapter-002.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-002.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  "That you were going to take Fieldhead on a lease (I thought it looked a dismal place, by-the-bye, to-night, as I passed it), and that it was your intention to settle a Miss Sykes there as mistress--to be married, in short, ha! And it perhaps rather agreed with Moore''s temperament than otherwise to be generally hated, especially when he believed the thing for which he was hated a right and an expedient thing; and it was with a sense of warlike excitement he, on this night, sat in his counting-house waiting the arrival of his frame-laden wagons. "They came home empty; and Joe Scott and company are left on the moor, and so are the frames.


id: chapter-003
title: chapter-003
txt: ./txt/chapter-003.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-003.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  If any member or members of the crew who had been at work on Stilbro'' Moor had caught a view of this party, they would have had great pleasure in shooting either of the leaders from behind a wall: and the leaders knew this; and the fact is, being both men of steely nerves and steady-beating hearts, were elate with the knowledge. Helstone was a high Tory (there were Tories in those days), and Moore was a bitter Whig--a Whig, at least, as far as opposition to the war-party was concerned, that being the question which affected his own interest; and only on that question did he profess any British politics at all. "I mean to say nothing, but I can think what I please, you know, Mr. Helstone, both about France and England; and about revolutions, and regicides, and restorations in general; and about the divine right of kings, which you often stickle for in your sermons, and the duty of non-resistance, and the sanity of war, and----"


id: chapter-004
title: chapter-004
txt: ./txt/chapter-004.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-004.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  The want of veneration made him intolerant to those above him--kings and nobles and priests, dynasties and parliaments and establishments, with all their doings, most of their enactments, their forms, their rights, their claims, were to him an abomination, all rubbish; he found no use or pleasure in them, and believed it would be clear gain, and no damage to the world, if its high places were razed, and their occupants crushed in the fall. Painters and musicians he could tolerate, and even encourage, because he could relish the results of their art; he could see the charm of a fine picture, and feel the pleasure of good music; but a quiet poet--whatever force struggled, whatever fire glowed, in his breast--if he could not have played the man in the counting-house, of the tradesman in the Piece Hall, might have lived despised, and died scorned, under the eyes of Hiram Yorke. As to the other guest now present in Mr. Yorke''s parlour, Mr. Helstone, between him and his host there existed a double antipathy--the antipathy of nature and that of circumstances.


id: chapter-005
title: chapter-005
txt: ./txt/chapter-005.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-005.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  You need not to think that because you''ve picked up a little knowledge of practical mathematics, and because you have found some scantling of the elements of chemistry at the bottom of a dyeing vat, that therefore you''re a neglected man of science; and you need not to suppose that because the course of trade does not always run smooth, and you, and such as you, are sometimes short of work and of bread, that therefore your class are martyrs, and that the whole form of government under which you live is wrong. The mill-windows were alight, the bell still rung loud, and now the little children came running in, in too great a hurry, let us hope, to feel very much nipped by the inclement air; and indeed, by contrast, perhaps the morning appeared rather favourable to them than otherwise, for they had often come to their work that winter through snow-storms, through heavy rain, through hard frost.


id: chapter-006
title: chapter-006
txt: ./txt/chapter-006.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-006.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  She worked her unrelentingly at the grammar of the French language, assigning her, as the most improving exercise she could devise, interminable "analyses logiques." These "analyses" were by no means a source of particular pleasure to Caroline; she thought she could have learned French just as well without them, and grudged excessively the time spent in pondering over "propositions, principales, et incidents;" in deciding the "incidente determinative," and the "incidente applicative;" in examining whether the proposition was "pleine," "elliptique," or "implicite." Sometimes she lost herself in the maze, and when so lost she would, now and then (while Hortense was rummaging her drawers upstairs--an unaccountable occupation in which she spent a large portion of each day, arranging, disarranging, rearranging, and counter-arranging), carry her book to Robert in the counting-house, and get the rough place made smooth by his aid.


id: chapter-007
title: chapter-007
txt: ./txt/chapter-007.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-007.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  As she entered her uncle''s breakfast-room, and with soft cheerfulness wished him good-morning, even that little man of bronze himself thought, for an instant, his niece was growing "a fine girl." Generally she was quiet and timid with him--very docile, but not communicative; this morning, however, she found many things to say. Thus it chanced on that afternoon that Caroline''s ears were three times tortured with the ringing of the bell and the advent of undesired guests; for Donne followed Malone, and Sweeting followed Donne; and more wine was ordered up from the cellar into the dining-room (for though old Helstone chid the inferior priesthood when he found them "carousing," as he called it, in their own tents, yet at his hierarchical table he ever liked to treat them to a glass of his best), and through the closed doors Caroline heard their boyish laughter, and the vacant cackle of their voices.


id: chapter-008
title: chapter-008
txt: ./txt/chapter-008.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-008.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  A dark-blue apparition (that of Joe Scott, fresh from a dyeing vat) appeared momentarily at the open door, uttered the words "He''s comed, sir," and vanished. A large man, broad-shouldered and massive-limbed, clad in fustian garments and gray worsted stockings, entered, who was received with a nod, and desired to take a seat, which he did, making the remark, as he removed his hat (a very bad one), stowed it away under his chair, and wiped his forehead with a spotted cotton handkerchief extracted from the hat-crown, that it was "raight dahn warm for Febewerry." Mr. Moore assented--at least he uttered some slight sound, which, though inarticulate, might pass for an assent. "Good-morning, Mr. Barraclough," said Moore debonairly, for him. "I''ve not much faith i'' Moses Barraclough," said he, "and I would speak a word to you myseln, Mr. Moore.


id: chapter-009
title: chapter-009
txt: ./txt/chapter-009.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-009.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  I thought it better not to lose time; so, while you were parleying with that down-looking gentleman--Farren I think his name is--I opened this back window, shouted to Murgatroyd, who was in the stable, to bring Mr. Sykes''s gig round; then I smuggled Sugden and brother Moses--wooden leg and all--through the aperture, and saw them mount the gig (always with our good friend Sykes''s permission, of course). He did not even bandy a repartee with Joe Scott, who, for his part, said to his master only just what was absolutely necessary to the progress of business, but looked at him a good deal out of the corners of his eyes, frequently came to poke the counting-house fire for him, and once, as he was locking up for the day (the mill was then working short time, owing to the slackness of trade), observed that it was a grand evening, and he "could wish Mr. Moore to take a bit of a walk up th'' Hollow.


id: chapter-010
title: chapter-010
txt: ./txt/chapter-010.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-010.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  The Cossack had perceived that whereas if Malone stepped in of an evening to make himself sociable and charming, by pinching the ears of an aged black cat, which usually shared with Miss Helstone''s feet the accommodation of her footstool, or by borrowing a fowling-piece, and banging away at a tool shed door in the garden while enough of daylight remained to show that conspicuous mark, keeping the passage and sitting-room doors meantime uncomfortably open for the convenience of running in and out to announce his failures and successes with noisy brusquerie--he had observed that under such entertaining circumstances Caroline had a trick of disappearing, tripping noiselessly upstairs, and remaining invisible till called down to supper.


id: chapter-011
title: chapter-011
txt: ./txt/chapter-011.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-011.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  Her uncle seemed to regard his sister-in-law with a sort of tacit antipathy; an old servant, who had lived with Mrs. James Helstone for a short time after her marriage, whenever she referred to her former mistress, spoke with chilling reserve--sometimes she called her "queer," sometimes she said she did not understand her. One morning her uncle came into the parlour, where she sat endeavouring to find some pleasure in painting a little group of wild flowers, gathered under a hedge at the top of the Hollow fields, and said to her in his abrupt manner, "Come, child, you are always stooping over palette, or book, or sampler; leave that tinting work. There is real grace in ease of manner, and so old Helstone felt when an erect, slight girl walked up to him, retaining with her left hand her little silk apron full of flowers, and, giving him her right hand, said pleasantly, "I knew you would come to see me, though you do think Mr. Yorke has made me a Jacobin.


id: chapter-012
title: chapter-012
txt: ./txt/chapter-012.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-012.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  Shirley showed she had been sincere in saying she should be glad of Caroline''s society, by frequently seeking it; and, indeed, if she had not sought it, she would not have had it, for Miss Helstone was slow to make fresh acquaintance. Observing that Mrs. Pryor again glanced with an air of interest towards the portraits, as she walked down the room, Caroline casually explained: "The likeness that hangs near the window, you will see, is my uncle, taken twenty years ago; the other, to the left of the mantelpiece, is his brother James, my father." Shirley Keeldar''s complete docility with Mrs. Pryor had at first surprised Miss Helstone, and not less the fact of the reserved ex-governess being so much at home and at ease in the residence of her young pupil, where she filled with such quiet independency a very dependent post; but she soon found that it needed but to know both ladies to comprehend fully the enigma.


id: chapter-013
title: chapter-013
txt: ./txt/chapter-013.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-013.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  Yet one day when Caroline drew near to rouse her, thinking she had lain long enough, behold, as she looked down, Shirley''s cheek was wet as if with dew; those fine eyes of hers shone humid and brimming. The figure walking at Miss Keeldar''s side is a man--a tall, young, stately man; it is her tenant, Robert Moore. Soon she recommenced, still looking somewhat courrouce, "Why, it is my daily pleasure now to look out for the little cottage bonnet and the silk scarf glancing through the trees in the lane, and to know that my quiet, shrewd, thoughtful companion and monitress is coming back to me; that I shall have her sitting in the room to look at, to talk to or to let alone, as she and I please. "I shall like to go, Shirley," again said Miss Helstone.


id: chapter-014
title: chapter-014
txt: ./txt/chapter-014.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-014.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  She said she had been "casting an eye" over the weekly expenditure in housekeeping at the hall, trying to find out where she could retrench; that she had also just given audience to Mrs. Gill, the cook, and had sent that person away with a notion that her (Shirley''s) brain was certainly crazed. Such preference shown by a single gentleman to a single lady would certainly, in ordinary cases, have set in motion the tongues of the gossips; but Cyril Hall was forty-five years old, slightly bald, and slightly gray, and nobody ever said or thought he was likely to be married to Miss Helstone. "I know the hand which drew up that," said Mr. Hall, glancing at Miss Ainley, and smiling benignantly. "Oh!" said Shirley, dipping the pen in the ink, and putting it into his hand, "you must regard me as Captain Keeldar to-day.


id: chapter-015
title: chapter-015
txt: ./txt/chapter-015.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-015.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  For the sake of air, as it appeared, or perhaps for that of ready exit in case of some new emergency arising, he took his seat,--not on the sofa, where Miss Keeldar offered him enthronization, nor yet near the fireside, to which Caroline, by a friendly sign, gently invited him, but on a chair close to the door. Mr. Hall''s eyes beamed benignantly through his spectacles, his plain face looked positively handsome with goodness; and when Caroline, seeing who was come, ran out to meet him, and put both her hands into his, he gazed down on her with a gentle, serene, affectionate expression that gave him the aspect of a smiling Melanchthon. Donne and Malone, indeed, contributed but little to its vivacity, the chief part they played in it being what concerned the knife, fork, and wine-glass; but where four such natures as Mr. Hall, David Sweeting, Shirley, and Caroline were assembled in health and amity, on a green lawn, under a sunny sky, amidst a wilderness of flowers, there could not be ungenial dullness.


id: chapter-016
title: chapter-016
txt: ./txt/chapter-016.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-016.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  By dint of Miss Keeldar''s example, the three rectors'' vigorous exertions, and the efficient though quiet aid of their spinster and spectacled lieutenants, Mary Ann Ainley and Margaret Hall, a handsome sum was raised; and this being judiciously managed, served for the present greatly to alleviate the distress of the unemployed poor. Caroline took her hand when she was dressed, hurried her downstairs, out of doors; and thus they sped through the fields, laughing as they went, and looking very much like a snow-white dove and gem-tinted bird of paradise joined in social flight. Caroline, too, is pleased, for she also has done good in her small way--robbed herself of more than one dress, ribbon, or collar she could ill spare, to aid in fitting out the scholars of her class; and as she could not give money, she has followed Miss Ainley''s example in giving her time and her industry to sew for the children.


id: chapter-017
title: chapter-017
txt: ./txt/chapter-017.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-017.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  Shirley bent towards her, almost touched her ear with her rosy lips, and whispered with a musical softness that often characterized her tones when what she said tended even remotely to stir some sweet secret source of feeling in her heart, "I expect Mr. Moore. Shirley, irritated by some unwelcome attentions from Sam Wynne, and by the fact of that gentleman being still seated on her gloves and handkerchief--and probably, also, by Moore''s want of punctuality--was by no means in good humour. "Where?" And as Caroline asked the question she looked not over the fields, but into Miss Keeldar''s eyes, as was her wont whenever Shirley mentioned any object she descried afar.


id: chapter-018
title: chapter-018
txt: ./txt/chapter-018.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-018.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  The desire which many a night had kept her awake in her crib, and which fear of its fallacy had of late years almost extinguished, relit suddenly, and glowed warm in her heart, that her mother might come some happy day, and send for her to her presence, look upon her fondly with loving eyes, and say to her tenderly, in a sweet voice, "Caroline, my child, I have a home for you; you shall live with me. Before gentlemen--such as Moore or Helstone, for instance--William was often a little dogged; with proud or insolent ladies, too, he was quite unmanageable, sometimes very resentful; but he was most sensible of, most tractable to, good-humour and civility. "So am I, Joe," replied Shirley, who had rather a pleasure in teasing the overlooker, by persisting in talking on subjects with which he opined she, as a woman, had no right to meddle--"partly, at least.


id: chapter-019
title: chapter-019
txt: ./txt/chapter-019.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-019.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  "There will be just light enough to show me the way home," said Miss Keeldar, as she prepared to take leave of Caroline at the rectory garden door. "If there should chance to be any disturbance in the night, captain; if you should hear the picking of a lock, the cutting out of a pane of glass, a stealthy tread of steps about the house (and I need not fear to tell you, who bear a well-tempered, mettlesome heart under your girl''s ribbon sash, that such little incidents are very possible in the present time), what would you do?" Entering the house, they repaired to the darkened dining-room, through the open windows of which apartment stole the evening air, bearing the perfume of flowers from the garden, the very distant sound of far-retreating steps from the road, and a soft, vague murmur whose origin Caroline explained by the remark, uttered as she stood listening at the casement, "Shirley, I hear the beck in the Hollow."


id: chapter-020
title: chapter-020
txt: ./txt/chapter-020.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-020.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  Life wastes fast in such vigils as Caroline had of late but too often kept--vigils during which the mind, having no pleasant food to nourish it, no manna of hope, no hived-honey of joyous memories, tries to live on the meagre diet of wishes, and failing to derive thence either delight or support, and feeling itself ready to perish with craving want, turns to philosophy, to resolution, to resignation; calls on all these gods for aid, calls vainly--is unheard, unhelped, and languishes. "I wonder how Mrs. Pryor and Hortense Moore have passed the night," said Caroline, as she made the coffee. Fanny, who had been to Fieldhead to fetch the milk, returned in panting haste with tidings that there had been a battle in the night at Mr. Moore''s mill, and that some said twenty men were killed. It was hurriedly written, and urged Miss Keeldar to return directly, as the neighbourhood and the house seemed likely to be all in confusion, and orders would have to be given which the mistress of the hall alone could regulate.


id: chapter-021
title: chapter-021
txt: ./txt/chapter-021.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-021.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  Mr. Helstone was about to add to this speech some half-jesting, half-serious warnings to Miss Keeldar on the subject of her rumoured partiality for her talented tenant, when a ring at the door, announcing another caller, checked his raillery; and as that other caller appeared in the form of a white-haired elderly gentleman, with a rather truculent countenance and disdainful eye--in short, our old acquaintance, and the rector''s old enemy, Mr. Yorke--the priest and Levite seized his hat, and with the briefest of adieus to Miss Keeldar and the sternest of nods to her guest took an abrupt leave. "Easy for you to talk," exclaimed Miss Keeldar, who was beginning to wax warm in her tenant''s cause--"you, whose family have lived at Briarmains for six generations, to whose person the people have been accustomed for fifty years, who know all their ways, prejudices, and preferences--easy, indeed, for you to act so as to avoid offending them. "My dear," ere long again began Mrs. Pryor, a sort of timid, embarrassed abruptness marking her manner as she spoke, "the young, especially those to whom nature has been favourable, often--frequently--anticipate--look forward to--to marriage as the end, the goal of their hopes."


id: chapter-022
title: chapter-022
txt: ./txt/chapter-022.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-022.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  Perhaps she goes to seek some just-then-remembered old ivory-backed needle-book or older china-topped work-box, quite unneeded, but which seems at the moment indispensable; perhaps to arrange her hair, or a drawer which she recollects to have seen that morning in a state of curious confusion; perhaps only to take a peep from a particular window at a particular view, whence Briarfield church and rectory are visible, pleasantly bowered in trees. Buoyant, by green steps, by glad hills, all verdure and light, she reaches a station scarcely lower than that whence angels looked down on the dreamer of Bethel, and her eye seeks, and her soul possesses, the vision of life as she wishes it. Their sisters have no earthly employment but household work and sewing, no earthly pleasure but an unprofitable visiting, and no hope, in all their life to come, of anything better.


id: chapter-023
title: chapter-023
txt: ./txt/chapter-023.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-023.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  One fine summer day that Caroline had spent entirely alone (her uncle being at Whinbury), and whose long, bright, noiseless, breezeless, cloudless hours (how many they seemed since sunrise!) had been to her as desolate as if they had gone over her head in the shadowless and trackless wastes of Sahara, instead of in the blooming garden of an English home, she was sitting in the alcove--her task of work on her knee, her fingers assiduously plying the needle, her eyes following and regulating their movements, her brain working restlessly--when Fanny came to the door, looked round over the lawn and borders, and not seeing her whom she sought, called out, "Miss Caroline!" Let me alone, then," said Rose, speaking from a corner where she was sitting on the carpet at the foot of a bookcase, with a volume spread open on her knee.--"Miss Helstone, how do you do?" she added, directing a brief glance to the person addressed, and then again casting down her gray, remarkable eyes on the book and returning to the study of its pages.


id: chapter-024
title: chapter-024
txt: ./txt/chapter-024.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-024.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  Mrs. Pryor, under ordinary circumstances, had neither the habit nor the art of performing little offices of service; but all now passed with such ease, so naturally, that the patient was as willing to be cherished as the nurse was bent on cherishing; no sign of weariness in the latter ever reminded the former that she ought to be anxious. She went to Mr. Helstone and expressed herself with so much energy that that gentleman was at last obliged, however unwillingly, to admit the idea that his niece was ill of something more than a migraine; and when Mrs. Pryor came and quietly demanded a physician, he said she might send for two if she liked.


id: chapter-025
title: chapter-025
txt: ./txt/chapter-025.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-025.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  Mrs. Pryor rose with a start, that her daughter might not see the joyful tears called into her eyes by that affectionate word "mamma," and the welcome assurance that followed it. Even Hortense, who would fain have stayed at home and aided Mrs. Pryor in nursing Caroline, had been so earnestly entreated by Miss Mann to accompany her once more to Wormwood Wells, in the hope of alleviating sufferings greatly aggravated by the insalubrious weather, that she felt obliged to comply; indeed, it was not in her nature to refuse a request that at once appealed to her goodness of heart, and, by a confession of dependency, flattered her amour propre. The evening restored Caroline entirely to her mother, and Mrs. Pryor liked the evening; for then, alone with her daughter, no human shadow came between her and what she loved.


id: chapter-026
title: chapter-026
txt: ./txt/chapter-026.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-026.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  I believe I should have been sceptical about the truth of the portrait traced by such fingers--both these ladies take a dark pleasure in offering to view the dark side of life--but I questioned Mr. Yorke on the subject, and he said, ''Shirley, my woman, if you want to know aught about yond'' James Helstone, I can only say he was a man-tiger. One living thing alone, besides his pale, crippled scholar, he fondled in the house, and that was the ruffianly Tartar, who, sullen and impracticable to others, acquired a singular partiality for him--a partiality so marked that sometimes, when Moore, summoned to a meal, entered the room and sat down unwelcomed, Tartar would rise from his lair at Shirley''s feet and betake himself to the taciturn tutor. "Shirley," said Caroline one day, as they two were sitting alone in the summer-house, "did you know that my cousin Louis was tutor in your uncle''s family before the Sympsons came down here?"


id: chapter-027
title: chapter-027
txt: ./txt/chapter-027.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-027.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  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 moneyed 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.


id: chapter-028
title: chapter-028
txt: ./txt/chapter-028.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-028.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  She went on to tell me that she had left Caroline Helstone some money too; that this manor house, with its furniture and books, she had bequeathed to me, as she did not choose to take the old family place from her own blood; and that all the rest of her property, amounting to about twelve thousand pounds, exclusive of the legacies to my sisters and Miss Helstone, she had willed, not to me, seeing I was already rich, but to a good man, who would make the best use of it that any human being could do--a man, she said, that was both gentle and brave, strong and merciful--a man that might not profess to be pious, but she knew he had the secret of religion pure and undefiled before God. The spirit of love and peace was with him.


id: chapter-029
title: chapter-029
txt: ./txt/chapter-029.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-029.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  Louis Moore longs to have something near him to-night; but not the boy-baronet, nor his benevolent but stern mother, nor his patrician sisters, nor one soul of the Sympsons. The wild rains of the day are abated; the great single cloud disparts and rolls away from heaven, not passing and leaving a sea all sapphire, but tossed buoyant before a continued, long-sounding, high-rushing moonlight tempest. "I used rather to like Solitude--to fancy her a somewhat quiet and serious, yet fair nymph; an Oread, descending to me from lone mountain-passes, something of the blue mist of hills in her array and of their chill breeze in her breath, but much also of their solemn beauty in her mien. It was unutterably sweet to feel myself at once near her and above her--to be conscious of a natural right and power to sustain her, as a husband should sustain his wife.


id: chapter-030
title: chapter-030
txt: ./txt/chapter-030.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-030.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  Everybody said it was high time for Mr. Moore to return home. One report affirmed that Moore dared not come to Yorkshire; he knew his life was not worth an hour''s purchase if he did. "I''ll tell him that," said Mr. Yorke, when his foreman mentioned the rumour; "and if that does not bring him home full gallop, nothing will." Mr. Yorke, moderately exhilarated with his moderate libations, and not displeased to see young Moore again in Yorkshire, and to have him for his comrade during the long ride home, took the discourse much to himself. "Hiram Yorke, I certainly believed she loved me. I have seen her eyes sparkle radiantly when she has found me out in a crowd; she has flushed up crimson when she has offered me her hand, and said, ''How do you do, Mr. Moore?'' "But you loved her, Yorke; you worshipped Mary Cave.


id: chapter-031
title: chapter-031
txt: ./txt/chapter-031.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-031.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  There were mementoes of the same lady in the cabinet adorning the recess; and while Shirley was stooping to examine the missal and the rosary on the inlaid shelf, and while the Misses Nunnely indulged in a prolonged screech, guiltless of expression, pure of originality, perfectly conventional and absolutely unmeaning, Sir Philip stooped too, and whispered a few hurried sentences. The next morning, having occasion to employ his son''s tutor as his secretary, he must needs announce to him, in mouthing accents, and with much flimsy pomp of manner, that he had better hold himself prepared for a return to the south at an early day, as the important business which had detained him (Mr. Sympson) so long in Yorkshire was now on the eve of fortunate completion. "I want--I demand to know, Miss Keeldar, whether Sir Philip has made you an offer?" You--you, Shirley Keeldar, refused Sir Philip Nunnely?"


id: chapter-032
title: chapter-032
txt: ./txt/chapter-032.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-032.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  Yorke went into hysterics when Jessie would not leave the garden to come to her knitting, or when Martin proposed starting for Australia, with a view to realize freedom and escape the tyranny of Matthew; but an attempted murder near her door--a half-murdered man in her best bed--set her straight, cheered her spirits, gave her cap the dash of a turban. Yet she gave the cook warning that day for venturing to make and carry up to Mr. Moore a basin of sago-gruel; and the housemaid lost her favour because, when Mr. Louis was departing, she brought him his surtout aired from the kitchen, and, like a "forward piece" as she was, helped him on with it, and accepted in return a smile, a "Thank you, my girl," and a shilling.


id: chapter-033
title: chapter-033
txt: ./txt/chapter-033.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-033.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  The first of these was to realize the breakfast he had not yet tasted, and with which his appetite of fifteen could ill afford to dispense; the second, third, fourth, to get his mother, Miss Moore, and Mrs. Horsfall successfully out of the way before four o''clock that afternoon. Martin, master of the field now, extracted from his mother''s work-basket a bunch of keys; with these he opened the sideboard cupboard, produced thence a black bottle and a small glass, placed them on the table, nimbly mounted the stairs, made for Mr. Moore''s door, tapped; the nurse opened. Martin, do see him, and give him Caroline Helstone''s regards, and say she wished to know how he was, and if anything could be done for his comfort." My father and Matthew are at the mill, Mark is at school, the servants are in the back kitchen, Miss Moore is at the cottage, my mother in her bed, and Mrs. Horsfall in paradise.


id: chapter-034
title: chapter-034
txt: ./txt/chapter-034.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-034.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  Miss Helstone--that girl he had always called ugly, and whose face was now perpetually before his eyes, by day and by night, in dark and in sunshine--had once come within his sphere. His father and mother, while disclaiming community with the Establishment, failed not duly, once on the sacred day, to fill their large pew in Briarfield Church with the whole of their blooming family. It proved a day of deep snow--so deep that Mrs. Yorke during breakfast announced her conviction that the children, both boys and girls, would be better at home; and her decision that, instead of going to church, they should sit silent for two hours in the back parlour, while Rose and Martin alternately read a succession of sermons--John Wesley''s "Sermons." John Wesley, being a reformer and an agitator, had a place both in her own and her husband''s favour. "Martin hates to go to church, but he hates still more to obey," said Mrs. Yorke.


id: chapter-035
title: chapter-035
txt: ./txt/chapter-035.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-035.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  "Hortense," said Moore, as his sister bustled up to help him off with his cloak, "I am pleased to come home." "Sister, I think on this first day of your return home you ought to have a friend or so to tea, if it were only to see how fresh and spruce you have made the little place." "Caroline, you look as if you had heard good tidings," said Moore, after earnestly gazing at her for some minutes. Every day that I live with her I like her better, I esteem her more highly, I love her more tenderly." Seeing that Moore waited and was resolved to hear something, she at last said, "Miss Keeldar spent a day at the rectory about a week since. "I have found her chary in showing her feelings; but when they rush out, river-like, and pass full and powerful before you--almost without leave from her--you gaze, wonder; you admire, and--I think--love her."


id: chapter-036
title: chapter-036
txt: ./txt/chapter-036.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-036.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  Indeed, the uncle could not bring himself to leave her quite unwatched--at full liberty to marry Robert Moore as soon as that gentleman should be able (Mr. Sympson piously prayed this might never be the case) to reassert his supposed pretensions to her hand. In his first rage against all the house of Moore, Mr. Sympson had so conducted himself towards Mr. Louis that that gentleman--patient of labour or suffering, but intolerant of coarse insolence--had promptly resigned his post, and could now be induced to resume and retain it only till such time as the family should quit Yorkshire. I have such a thirst for freedom, such a deep passion to know her and call her mine, such a day-desire and night-longing to win her and possess her, I will not refuse to cross the Atlantic for her sake; her I will follow deep into virgin woods.


id: chapter-037
title: chapter-037
txt: ./txt/chapter-037.txt
cache: ./cache/chapter-037.txt
extension: .txt
mime: text/plain
summary:
  The magistrates made a shuffling, as if they were going to rise and do valiant things; but since Moore himself, instead of urging and leading them as heretofore, lay still on his little cottage-couch, laughing in his sleeve, and sneering with every feature of his pale, foreign face, they considered better of it, and after fulfilling certain indispensable forms, prudently resolved to let the matter quietly drop, which they did. And so Caroline Helstone thought, when she dressed herself more carefully than usual on the day of this trading triumph, and went, attired in her neatest muslin, to spend the afternoon at Fieldhead, there to superintend certain millinery preparations for a great event, the last appeal in these matters being reserved for her unimpeachable taste. "Caroline, the houseless, the starving, the unemployed shall come to Hollow''s Mill from far and near; and Joe Scott shall give them work, and Louis Moore, Esq., shall let them a tenement, and Mrs. Gill shall mete them a portion till the first pay-day."


