“That is just what I told the young man, my dear child--that I never had heard the name,” said I; “but I promised to try all I could to get some news for him. It is very sad he should be disappointed, poor young fellow. I promised to ask Ellis, who has been centuries with the Mortimers, you know; and I thought, perhaps, your godmamma and I, if we had a talk together, might recollect somebody that married a foreigner----”
Here I made a dead pause in spite of myself. Sarah had somehow managed to get back into her seat. She was wonderfully pale and haggard, and looked like a different creature. She looked to me as if all her powers were strained for some purpose, and that at any moment the pressure might be too much, and she might give way under it. I could not go on; I stopped short all at once, with a feeling that somehow I had been cruel. “Not to-night,” I said softly to Sara, “another time.” Sara was obedient for a miracle. We broke off the conversation just at that point, with an uneasy feeling among us that it had been far more interesting and exciting than it ought to have been; and that the best thing to be done was to bury it up, and conceal what we had been talking about. Such was the immediate result of my easy promise to consult my sister. Sarah sat very steadily through all that evening, remaining up even later than usual. She took no notice of anything that was said, nor mentioned why she went away. We were all very quiet, and had little to say for ourselves. What was this forbidden ground?
It is very odd, when there happens to be any one bit of tabooed ground in a family, how impossible it is to keep off it. I daresay every member of a household, above childhood, knows that, more or less. If there is one matter that some two people are quite sure to disagree upon, whom it is quite the business of your life to keep comfortable and on good terms, isn’t that matter always turning up somehow? Doesn’t it float about in the air, and hover over your head, always ready to poke in when it is not wanted, and do what mischief it can? That is my experience, at least. And it was so much the worse in our case, because little Sara had no idea of keeping quiet, and no notion that her innocent mischief and meddling could do any real harm, or have any worse effect than putting her godmamma “in a passion.” Putting people in a passion was fun to the thoughtless little girl; it never came into her little saucy inconsiderate head that Sarah’s passion was not a flash of harmless lightning like her own, or that it meant anything which could disturb and overturn all my sister’s quiet life, and put me into a fever of bewilderment and anxiety. For days after I kept carefully off the subject, thinking it would be better to leave a polite message with Ellis for the Italian young gentleman if he called, and say I was sorry I could not get him any information, than to worry my poor sister, who was so unaccountably disturbed by hearing of him. Not that Sarah said anything about it; but she looked so haggard and anxious that it went to my heart. She came down even earlier than usual and sat up later; listened eagerly to all the conversation going on; sometimes, even, missed her drive; sat on the watch, as one might have supposed; but when she had gone out for her airing one day, I met the carriage,--and, can you believe it, the very blinds were down! If, when all was quiet, and nothing had happened, I used to wonder sometimes what sort of life she had led when she was younger, what friends she might have had, and what was her history when she was abroad, you may fancy how busy my mind was on that subject now.