"'Ah! you know: I will not gratify you: I will not flatter.'
"'I don't know half enough: my heart craves to be fed. If you knew how hungry and ferocious it is, you would hasten to stay it with a kind word or two.'
"'Poor Tartar!' said she, touching and patting my hand: 'poor fellow; stalwart friend; Shirley's pet and favourite, lie down!'
"'But I will not lie down till I am fed with one sweet word.'
"'And at last she gave it.
"'Dear Louis, be faithful to me: never leave me. I don't care for life, unless I may pass it at your side.'
"'Something more.'
"She gave me a change: it was not her way to offer the same dish twice.
"'Sir!' she said, starting up, 'at your peril, you ever again name such sordid things as money, or poverty, or inequality. It will be absolutely dangerous to torment me with these maddening scruples. I defy you to do it.'
"My face grew hot. I did once more wish I were not so poor, or she were not so rich. She saw the transient misery; and then, indeed, she caressed me. Blent with torment, I experienced rapture.
"'Mr. Moore,' said she, looking up with a sweet, open, earnest countenance, 'teach me and help me to be good. I do not ask you to take off my shoulders all the cares and duties of property; but I ask you to share the burden, and to show me how to sustain my
