the eyes were not those of an eagle; they were a dove's eyes.

"A secret, little one, is a mole that burrows," said my uncle.

The moment of insight was come. A voice seemed suddenly to say within me,
"He has a secret; it is biting his heart!" My affection, my devotion, my
sacred concern for him, as suddenly swelled to twice their size. It was
as if a God were in pain, and I could not help him. I had no desire to
learn his secret; I only yearned heart and soul to comfort him. Before
long, I had a secret myself for half a day: ever after, I shared so in
the trouble of his secret, that I seemed myself to possess or rather to
be possessed by one--such a secret that I did not myself know it.

But in truth I had a secret then; for the moment I knew that he had a
secret, his secret--the outward fact of its existence, I mean--was my
secret. And besides this secret of his, I had then a secret of my own.
For I knew that my uncle had a secret, and he did not know that I knew.
Therewith came, of course, the question--Ought I to tell him? At once, by
the instinct of love, I saw that to tell him would put him in a great
difficulty. He might wish me never to let any one else know of it, and
how could he say so when he had been constantly warning me to let nothing
grow to a secret in my heart? As to telling Martha Moon, much as I loved
her, much as I knew she loved my uncle, and sure as I was that anything
concerning him was as sacred to her as to me, I dared not commit such a
breach of confidence as even to think in her presence that my uncle had a
secret. From that hour I had recurrent fits of a morbid terror at the
very idea of a secret--as if a secret were in itself a treacherous,
poisonous guest, that ate away the life of its host.

But to return, my half-day-secret came in this wise.