"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 every body 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 color 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."
Endeavoring thus to re-assure the old man, she again altered the position of her chair, so as to place her back toward 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."