“Yes, I am very grateful,” said Lily, holding out her thin hand, “to both them and you, Uncle Robert, and most of all to you, for it was out of your way indeed; but as for God, I am not sure that I am grateful to him, for he might have taken me out of all the trouble while he was at it, and that would have been the best for us all. But,” she added, looking up suddenly with one of her old quick changes of feeling and countenance, “how should you think I meant dying? There are many, many things that might happen besides that. I might go away, or you might send me away.” “I’ll not do that, Lily.” “How do you know, Uncle Robert? You sent me away once before when you sent me here. You might do it again--or, what is more, I might ask you---- Oh, Uncle Robert, let me go away a little, let me leave the sight of it, and the loneliness that has broken my heart!” Lily put her transparent hands together and looked at him with a pathetic entreaty in her face. “Go away!” he said, startled, “as soon as I come here--the first time you come into the drawing-room to ask that!” “It is true,” said Lily, “it’s ungrateful, oh, it’s without heart, it’s unkind, Uncle Robert, as you say; but only for a little while, till I get a little better. I will never get better here.” “This is a great disappointment to me,” he said. “I thought I would have you, Lily, to keep me company. I thought you would be my companion and take care of me for a year or two. I am not likely at my age to trouble any body for very long,” he added with a half-conscious appeal for sympathy. “And so I will,” said Lily; “I will be your companion. I will be at your side to do whatever you please--to read or to write, to walk or to talk. I will look for nothing else in this world, and I will never leave you, Uncle Robert, and there is my hand upon that. But I must be well first,” she added rapidly. “And I will never get well here. Oh, let me go! If it was but for a week, for a fortnight, for two or three days. Is it not always said of ill folk that when they get better they must have a change? Let me have a change, Uncle Robert! I want to look out at something that is not the moor. Oh, how long, how long, if you will only think of it, I have been looking at nothing but the moor! I am tired, tired of the moor! Oh, I am wearied of it! I have liked it well, and I will come back and like it again. But for a little while, uncle, only for a little while, let me go away from the moor.” “Is it so long a time?” he said. “I was not aware you had been here so long a time. Why, it is not two years! If you think two years is a long time, Lily, wait till you know what life is, and that a year’s but a moment when you look back upon it.”