ill, you frighten me! " cried Uncle Joseph,
starting to his feet.

She turned round slowly, and looked at
him with eyes void of all expression, with
eyes that seemed to be staring through him
vacantly at something beyond.

"Gott im Himmel! what does she see?"
He looked round as the exclamation escaped
him. " Sarah! what is it! Are you faint?
Are you ill? Are your dreaming with your
eyes open?"

He took her by both arms and shook her.
At the instant when she felt the touch of
his hands, she started violently and trembled
all over. Their natural expression flew back
into her eyes with the rapidity of a flash of
light. Without saying a word, she hastily
resumed her seat and began stirring the
cold tea round and round in her cup, round
and round so fast that the liquid overflowed
into the saucer.

"Come! she gets more like herself," said
Uncle Joseph, watching her.

"More like myself? " she repeated,
vacantly.

"So! so! " said the old man, trying to
soothe her. "You are ill—what the English
call, out of sort. They are good doctors here.
Wait till to-morrow, you shall have the best."

"I want no doctors. Don't speak of
doctors. I can't bear them; they look at
me with such curious eyes; they are always
prying into me, as if they wanted to find out
something. What have we been stopping
for ? I had so much to say; and we seem to
have been stopping just when we ought to
have been going on. I am in grief and
terror, Uncle Joseph; in grief and terror
again about the Secret—"

"No more of that! " pleaded the old man.
" No more to-night, at least!"

"Why not?"

"Because you will be ill again with talking
about it. You will be looking into that
corner, and dreaming with your eyes open.
You are too ill—yes, yes, Sarah; you are too
ill."

"I'm not ill! Oh, why does everybody
keep telling me that I am ill? Let me talk
about it, uncle. I have come to talk about
it; I can't rest till I have told you."

She spoke with a changing colour and an
embarrassed manner, now apparently
conscious for the first time that she had allowed
words and actions to escape her which it
would have been more prudent to have
restrained.

"Don't notice me again," she said with her
soft voice and her gentle, pleading manner.
"Don't notice me if I talk or look as I ought
not. I lose myself sometimes, without
knowing it; and I suppose I lost myself just
now. It means nothing, Uncle Joseph—
nothing indeed."

Endeavouring thus to reassure the old
man, she again altered the position of her
chair, so as to place her back towards the
part of the room to which her face had been
hitherto turned.

"Well, well, it is good to hear that,"
said Uncle Joseph; " but speak no more
about the past time, for fear you should lose
yourself again. Let us hear about what is
now. Yes, yes, give me my way. Leave the
Long Ago to me, and take you the present
time. I can go back through the sixteen
years as well as you. Ah! you doubt it?
Hear me tell you what happened when we
last met—hear me prove myself in three
words: You leave your place at the old house
—you run away here—you stop in hiding
with me, while your master and his servants
are hunting after you—you start off, when
your road is clear, to work for your living,
as far away from Cornwall as you can get— I
beg and pray you to stop with me, but you
are afraid of your master, and away you go.
There! that is the whole story of your
trouble the last time you came to this house.
Leave it so; and tell me what is the cause
of your trouble now."

"The past cause of my trouble, Uncle
Joseph, and the present cause of my trouble
are the same. The Secret—"

"What! you will go back to that?"

"I must go back to it."

"And why?"

"Because the Secret is written in a
letter—"

"Yes; and what of that?"

"And the letter is in danger of being
discovered. It is, uncle— it is! Sixteen years
it has lain hidden—and now, after all that
long time, the dreadful chance of its being
dragged to light has come like a judgment.
The one person in all the world who ought
never to set eyes on that letter is the very
person who is most likely to find it!"

"So! so! Are you very certain, Sarah?
How do you know it?"

"I know it from her own lips. Chance
brought us together—"

"Us ? us? What do you mean by us?"

"I mean—uncle, you remember that
Captain Treverton was my master when I
lived at Porthgenna Tower?"

"I had forgotten his name. But, no matter—
go on."

"When I left my place Miss Treverton
was a little girl of five years old. She is a
married woman now—so beautiful, so clever,
such a sweet, youthful, happy face! And
she has a child as lovely as herself. Oh,
uncle, if you could see her! I would give so
much if you could only see her!"

Uncle Joseph kissed his hand and shrugged
his shoulders; expressing, by the first action,
homage to the lady's beauty, and, by the
second, resignation under the misfortune of
not being able to see her. " Well, well," he
said, philosophically, " put this shining woman
by, and let us go on."

"Her name is Frankland now," said Sarah.
"A prettier name than Treverton, a much