secret self: "She has some human feeling left. If her son goes away, she
knows that they may never meet again!"

From the moment when my mind emerged from the darkness, I recovered the
use of such intelligence and courage as I naturally possessed. From this
point, you will find that, right or wrong, I saw my way before me, and
took it.

To say that I felt for the General with my whole heart, is merely to own
that I could be commonly grateful. I sat on his knee, and laid my cheek
against his cheek, and thanked him for his long, long years of kindness
to me. He stopped me in his simple generous way. "Why, Mina, you talk
as if you were going to leave us!" I started up, and went to the window,
opening it and complaining of the heat, and so concealing from him that
he had unconsciously anticipated the event that was indeed to come. When
I returned to my chair, he helped me to recover myself by alluding once
more to his wife. He feared that her health was in some way impaired. In
the time when they had first met, she was subject to nervous maladies,
having their origin in a "calamity" which was never mentioned by either
of them in later days. She might possibly be suffering again, from
some other form of nervous derangement, and he seriously thought of
persuading her to send for medical advice.

Under ordinary circumstances, this vague reference to a "calamity" would
not have excited any special interest in me. But my mind was now in a
state of morbid suspicion. I had not heard how long my uncle and aunt
had been married; but I remembered that Michael had described himself
as being twenty-six years old. Bearing these circumstances in mind, it
struck me that I might be acting wisely (in Michael's interest) if I
persuaded the General to speak further of what had happened, at the time
when he met the woman whom an evil destiny had bestowed on him for a
wife. Nothing but the consideration of serving the man I loved would
have reconciled me to making my own secret use of the recollections
which my uncle might innocently confide to me. As it was, I thought the
means would, in this case, he for once justified by the end. Before we
part, I have little doubt that you will think so too.

I found it an easier task than I had anticipated to turn the talk back
again to the days when the General had seen Lady Claudia for the first
time. He was proud of the circumstances under which he had won his wife.
Ah, how my heart ached for him a