"There! it is over," said Shirley when he was gone. "We have made him bid us good-night, and yet not lost ground in his esteem, I think, Cary."
"I hope not," was the brief reply.
"I consider you very timid and undemonstrative," remarked Miss Keeldar. "Why did you not give Moore your hand when he offered you his? He is your cousin; you like him. Are you ashamed to let him perceive your affection?"
"He perceives all of it that interests him. No need to make a display of feeling."
"You are laconic; you would be stoical if you could. Is love, in your eyes, a crime, Caroline?"
"Love a crime! No, Shirley; love is a divine virtue. But why drag that word into the conversation? It is singularly irrelevant."
"Good!" pronounced Shirley.
The two girls paced the green lane in silence. Caroline first resumed.
"Obtrusiveness is a crime, forwardness is a crime, and both disgust; but love! no purest angel need blush to love. And when I see or hear either man or woman couple shame with love, I know their minds are coarse, their associations debased. Many who think themselves refined ladies and gentlemen, and on whose lips the word 'vulgarity' is for ever hovering, cannot mention 'love' without betraying their own innate and imbecile degradation. It is a low feeling in their estimation, connected only with low ideas for them."
"You describe three-fourths of the world, Caroline."