Mr. Moore allowed his pupil a moment to contend with and master his emotion. He then demanded, "What else did she say?"
"When I had signified my full consent to the conditions of her will, she told me I was a generous boy, and she was proud of me. 'And now,' she added, 'in case anything should happen, you will know what to say to Malice when she comes whispering hard things in your ear, insinuating that Shirley has wronged you, that she did not love you. You will know that I did love you, Harry; that no sister could have loved you better—my own treasure.' Mr. Moore, sir, when I remember her voice, and recall her look, my heart beats as if it would break its strings. She may go to heaven before me—if God commands it, she must; but the rest of my life—and my life will not be long, I am glad of that now—shall be a straight, quick, thoughtful journey in the path her step has pressed. I thought to enter the vault of the Keeldars before her. Should it be otherwise, lay my coffin by Shirley's side."
Moore answered him with a weighty calm, that offered a strange contrast to the boy's perturbed enthusiasm.
"You are wrong, both of you—you harm each other. If youth once falls under the influence of a shadowy terror, it imagines there will never be full sunlight again; its first calamity it fancies will last a lifetime. What more did she say? Anything more?"
"We settled one or two family points between ourselves."
"I should rather like to know what——"
"But, Mr. Moore, you smile. I could not smile to see Shirley in such a mood."
"My boy, I am neither nervous, nor poetic, nor inexperienced. I see things as they are; you don't as yet. Tell me these family points."
"Only, sir, she asked me whether I considered myself most of a Keeldar or a Sympson; and I answered I was Keeldar to the core of the heart and to the marrow of the bones. She said she was glad of it; for, besides her, I was the only Keeldar left in England. And then we agreed on some matters."
"Well?"