'Rachel, dear, you have not told my secret?'

'No, indeed, Dorcas--never, and never will; and I think, though I have learned to fear death, I would rather die than let Stanley even suspect it.'

She spoke with a sudden energy, which partook of fear and pa.s.sion, and flushed her thin cheek, and made her languid eyes flash.

'Thank you, Rachel, my Cousin Rachel, my only friend. I ought not to have doubted you,' and she kissed her again. 'Chelford had a note from Mr.

Wylder this morning--another note--his coming delayed, and something of his having to see some person who is abroad,' continued Dorcas, after a little pause. 'You have heard, of course, of Mr. Wylder's absence?'

'Yes, something--_everything_,' said Rachel, hurriedly, looking frowningly at a flower which she was twirling in her fingers.

'He chose an unlucky moment for his departure. I meant to speak to him and end all between us; and I would now write, but there is no address to his letters. I think Lady Chelford and her son begin to think there is more in this oddly-timed journey of Mr. Wylder's than first appeared.

When I came into the parlour this morning I knew they were speaking of it. If he does not return in a day or two, Chelford, I am sure, will speak to me, and then I shall tell him my resolution.'

'Yes,' said Rachel.

'I don't understand his absence. I think _they_ are puzzled, too. Can you conjecture why he is gone?'

Rachel made no answer, but rose with a dreamy look, as if gazing at some distant object among the dark ma.s.ses of forest trees, and stood before the window so looking across the tiny garden.

'I don't think, Rachel dear, you heard me?' said Dorcas.

'Can I conjecture why he is gone?' murmured Rachel, still gazing with a wild kind of apathy into distance. 'Can I? What can it now be to you or me--why? Yes, we sometimes conjecture right, and sometimes wrong; there are many things best not conjectured about at all--some interesting, some abominable, some that pa.s.s all comprehension: I never mean to conjecture, if I can help it, again.'

And the wan oracle having spoken, she sate down in the same sort of abstraction again beside Dorcas, and she looked full in her cousin's eyes.

'I made you a voluntary promise, Dorcas, and now you will make me one. Of Mark Wylder I say this: his name has been for years hateful to me, and recently it has become frightful; and you will promise me simply this, that you will never ask me to speak again about him. Be he near, or be he far, I regard his very name with horror.'

Dorcas returned her gaze with one of haughty amazement; and Rachel said,

'Well, Dorcas, you promise?'

'You speak truly, Rachel, you _have_ a right to my promise: I give it.'

'Dorcas, you are changed; have I lost your love for asking so poor a kindness?'

'I'm only disappointed, Rachel; I thought you would have trusted me, as I did you.'

'It is an antipathy--an antipathy I cannot get over, dear Dorcas; you may think it a madness, but don't blame me. Remember I am neither well nor happy, and forgive what you cannot like in me. I have very few to love me now, and I thought you might love me, as I have begun to love you. Oh!

Dorcas, darling, don't forsake me; I am very lonely here and my spirits are gone and I never needed kindness so much before.'

And she threw her arms round her cousin's neck, and brave Rachel at last burst into tears.

Dorcas, in her strange way, was moved.

'I like you still, Rachel; I'm sure I'll always like you. You resemble me, Rachel: you are fearless and inflexible and generous. That spirit belongs to the blood of our strange race; all our women were so. Yes, Rachel, I do love you. I was wounded to find you had thoughts you would not trust to me; but I have made the promise, and I'll keep it; and I love you all the same.'

'Thank you, Dorcas, dear. I like to call you cousin--kindred is so pleasant. Thank you, from my heart, for your love; you will never know, perhaps, how much it is to me.'

The young queen looked on her kindly, but sadly, through her large, strange eyes, clouded with a presage of futurity, and she kissed her again, and said--

'Rachel, dear, I have a plan for you and me: we shall be old maids, you and I, and live together like the ladies of Llangollen, careless and happy recluses. I'll let Brandon and abdicate. We will make a little tour together, when all this shall have blown over, in a few weeks, and choose our retreat; and with the winter's snow we'll vanish from Brandon, and appear with the early flowers at our cottage among the beautiful woods and hills of Wales. Will you come, Rachel?'

At sight of this castle or cottage in the air, Rachel lighted up. The little whim had something tranquillising and balmy. It was escape--flight from Gylingden--flight from Brandon--flight from Redman's Farm: they and all their hated a.s.sociations would be far behind, and that awful page in her story, not torn out, indeed, but gummed down as it were, and no longer glaring and glowering in her eyes every moment of her waking life.

So she smiled upon the picture painted on the clouds; it was the first thing that had interested her for days. It was a hope. She seized it; she clung to it. She knew, perhaps, it was the merest chimera; but it rested and consoled her imagination, and opened, in the blackness of her sky, one small vista, through whose silvery edge the blue and stars of heaven were visible.

CHAPTER XXV.

CAPTAIN LAKE LOOKS IN AT NIGHTFALL.

In the queer little drawing-room of Redman's Farm it was twilight, so dense were the shadows from the great old chestnuts that surrounded it, before the sun was well beneath the horizon; and you could, from its darkened window, see its red beams still tinting the high grounds of Willerston, visible through the stems of the old trees that were ma.s.sed in the near foreground.

A figure which had lost its energy--a face stamped with the lines and pallor of a dejection almost guilty--with something of the fallen grace and beauty of poor Margaret, as we see her with her forehead leaning on her slender hand, by the stirless spinning-wheel--the image of a strange and ineffaceable sorrow, sat Rachel Lake.

Tamar might glide in and out; her mistress did not speak; the shadows deepened round her, but she did look up, nor call, in the old cheerful accents, for lights. No more roulades and ringing chords from the piano--no more clear spirited tones of the lady's voice sounded through the low ceilings of Redman's Farm, and thrilled with a haunting melody the deserted glen, wherein the birds had ended their vesper songs and gone to rest.

A step was heard at the threshold--it entered the hall; the door of the little chamber opened, and Stanley Lake entered, saying in a doubtful, almost timid way--

'It is I, Radie, come to thank you, and just to ask you how you do, and to say I'll never forget your kindness; upon my honour, I never can.'

Rachel shuddered as the door opened, and there was a ghastly sort of expectation in her look. Imperfectly as it was seen, he could understand it. She did not bid him welcome or even speak. There was a silence.

'Now, you're not angry with me, Radie dear; I venture to say I suffer more than you: and how could I have antic.i.p.ated the strange turn things have taken? You know how it all came about, and you must see I'm not really to blame, at least in intention, for all this miserable trouble; and even if I were, where's the good in angry feeling or reproaches now, don't you see, when I can't mend it? Come, Radie, let by-gones be by-gones. There's a good girl; won't you?'

'Aye, by-gones are by-gones; the past is, indeed, immutable, and the future is equally fixed, and more dreadful.'

'Come, Radie; a clever girl like you can make your own future.'

'And what do you want of me now?' she asked, with a fierce cold stare.

'But I did not say I wanted anything.'

'Of course you do, or I should not have seen you. Mark me though, I'll go no further in the long route of wickedness you seem to have marked out for me. I'm sacrificed, it is true, but I won't renew my hourly horrors, and live under the rule of your diabolical selfishness.'

'Say what you will, but keep your temper--will you?' he answered, more like his angry self. But he checked the rising devil within him, and changed his tone; he did not want to quarrel--quite the reverse.

'I don't know really, Radie, why you should talk as you do. I don't want you to do anything--upon my honour I don't--only just to exercise your common sense--and you have lots of sense, Radie. Don't you think people have eyes to see, and ears and tongues in this part of the world? Don't you know very well, in a small place like this, they are all alive with curiosity? and if you choose to make such a tragedy figure, and keep moping and crying, and all that sort of thing, and look so _funeste_ and miserable, you'll be sure to fix attention and set the whole d--d place speculating and gossiping? and really, Radie, you're making mountains of mole-hills. It is because you live so solitary here, and it _is_ such a gloomy out-o'-the-way spot--so awfully dark and damp, n.o.body _could_ be well here, and you really must change. It is the very temple of blue-devilry, and I a.s.sure you if I lived as you do I'd cut my throat before a month--you _mustn't_. And old Tamar, you know, such a figure!

The very priestess of despair. She gives me the horrors, I a.s.sure you, whenever I look at her; you must not keep her, she's of no earthly use, poor old thing; and, you know, Radie, we're not rich enough--you and I--to support other people. You must really place yourself more cheerfully, and I'll speak to Chelford about Tamar. There's a very nice place--an asylum, or something, for old women--near--(Dollington he was going to say, but the a.s.sociations were not pleasant)--near some of those little towns close to this, and he's a visitor, or governor, or whatever they call it. It is really not fair to expect you or me to keep people like that.'

'She has not cost you much hitherto, Stanley, and she will give you very little trouble hereafter. I won't part with Tamar.'

'She has not cost me much?' said Lake, whose temper was not of a kind to pa.s.s by anything. 'No; of course, she has not. _I_ can't afford a guinea.

You're poor enough; but in proportion to my expenses--a woman, of course, can live on less than half what a man can--I'm a great deal poorer than you; and I never said I gave her sixpence--did I? I have not got it to give, and I don't think she's fool enough to expect it; and, to say the truth, I don't care. I only advise you. There are some cheerful little cottages near the green, in Gylingden, and I venture to think, this is one of the very gloomiest and most uncomfortable places you could have selected to live in.'

Rachel looked drearily toward the window and sighed--it was almost a groan.