"Sir?"
"I will call you when I want you: till then, you are dispensed from lessons."
He departed. Mr. Moore, left alone, rose from his desk.
"I can be very cool and very supercilious with Henry," he said. "I can seem to make light of his apprehensions, and look down 'du haut de ma grandeur' on his youthful ardour. To him I can speak as if, in my eyes, they were both children. Let me see if I can keep up the same rôle with her. I have known the moment when I seemed about to forget it; when Confusion and Submission seemed about to crush me with their soft tyranny; when my tongue faltered, and I have almost let the mantle drop, and stood in her presence, not master—no—but something else. I trust I shall never so play the fool: it is well for a Sir Philip Nunnely to redden when he meets her eye: he may permit himself the indulgence of submission—he may even without disgrace suffer his hand to tremble when it touches hers; but if one of her farmers were to show himself susceptible and sentimental, he would merely prove his need of a strait waistcoat. So far I have always done very well. She has sat near me, and I have not shaken—more than my desk. I have encountered her looks and smiles like—why like a tutor, as I am. Her hand I never yet touched—never underwent that test. Her farmer or her footman I am not—no serf nor servant of hers have I ever been; but I am poor,
