And when, in fitful reveries, fancy turned for a moment to an earthly past and future, all there was a blank--the past saddened, the future bleak. She did not know, or even suspect, that she had been living in an aerial castle, and worshipping an unreal image, until, on a sudden, all was revealed in that chance gleam of cruel lightning, the line in that letter, which she read so often, spelled over, and puzzled over so industriously, though it was clear enough. How n.o.ble, how good, how bright and true, was that hero of her unconscious romance.

Well, no one else suspected that incipient madness--that was something; and brave Rachel would quite master it. Happy she had discovered it so soon. Besides, it was, even if Chelford were at her feet, a wild impossibility now; and it was well, though despair were in the pang, that she had, at last, quite explained this to herself.

As Rachel stood in her little garden, on the spot where she had bidden farewell to the vicar, she was roused from her vague and dismal reverie by the sound of a carriage close at hand. She had just time to see that it was a brougham, and to recognise the Brandon liveries, when it drew up at the garden wicket, and Dorcas called to her from the open window.

'I'm come, Rachel, expressly to take you with me; and I won't be denied.'

'You are very good, Dorcas; thank you, dear, very much; but I am not very well, and a very dull companion to-day.'

'You think I am going to bore you with visits. No such thing, I a.s.sure you. I have taken a fancy to walk on the common, that is all--a kind of longing; and you must come with me; quite to ourselves, you and I. You won't refuse me, darling; I know you'll come.'

Well, Rachel did go. And away they drove through the quiet town of Gylingden together, and through the short street on the right, and so upon the still quieter common.

This plain of green turf broke gradually into a heath; and an irregular screen of timber and underwood divided the common of Gylingden in sylvan fashion from the moor. The wood pa.s.sed, Dorcas stopped the carriage, and the two young ladies descended. It was a sunny day, and the air still; and the open heath contrasted pleasantly with the sombre and confined scenery of Redman's Dell; and altogether Rachel was glad now that she had made the effort, and come with her cousin.

'It was good of you to come, Rachel,' said Miss Brandon; 'and you look tired; but you sha'n't speak more than you like; and I'll tell you all the news. Chelford is just returned from Brighton; he arrived this morning; and he and Lady Chelford will stay for the Hunt Ball. I made it a point. And he called at Hockley, on his way back, to see Sir Julius. Do you know him?'

'Sir Julius Hockley? No--I've heard of him only.'

'Well, they say he is wasting his property very fast; and I think him every way very nearly a fool; but Chelford wanted to see him about Mr.

Wylder. Mark Wylder, you know, of course, has turned up again in England.

His letter to Chelford, six weeks ago, was from Boulogne; but his last was from Brighton; and Sir Julius Hockley witnessed--I think they call it--that letter of attorney which Mark sent about a week since to Mr.

Larkin; and Chelford, who is most anxious to trace Mark Wylder, having to surrender--I think they call it--a "trust" is not it--or something--I really don't understand these things--to him, and not being able to find out his address, Mr. Larkin wrote to Sir Julius, whom Chelford did not find at home, to ask him for a description of Mark, to ascertain whether he had disguised himself; and Sir Julius wrote to Chelford such an absurd description of poor Mark, in doggrel rhyme--so like--his odd walk, his great whiskers, and everything. Chelford does not like personalities, but he could not help laughing. Are you ill, darling?'

Though she was walking on beside her companion, Rachel looked on the point of fainting.

'My darling, you must sit down; you do look very ill. I forgot my promise about Mark Wylder. How stupid I have been! and perhaps I have distressed you.'

'No, Dorcas, I am pretty well; but I have been ill, and I am a little tired; and, Dorcas, I don't deny it, I _am_ amazed, you tell me such things. That letter of attorney, or whatever it is, must not be acted upon. It is incredible. It is all horrible wickedness. Mark Wylder's fate is dreadful, and Stanley is the mover of all this. Oh! Dorcas, darling, I wish I could tell you everything. Some day I may be--I am sick and terrified.'

They had sat down, by this time, side by side, on the crisp bank. Each lady looked down, the one in suffering, the other in thought.

'You are better, darling; are not you better?' said Dorcas, laying her hand on Rachel's, and looking on her with a melancholy gaze.

'Yes, dear, better--very well'--answered Rachel, looking up but without an answering glance at her cousin.

'You blame your brother, Rachel, in this affair.'

'Did I? Well--maybe--yes, he _is_ to blame--the miserable man--whom I hate to think of, and yet am always thinking of--Stanley well knows is not in a state to do it.'

'Don't you think, Rachel, remembering what I have confided to you, that you might be franker with me in this?'

'Oh, Dorcas! don't misunderstand me. If the secret were all my own--Heaven knows, hateful as it is, how boldly I would risk all, and throw myself on your fidelity or your mercy--I know not how you might view it; but it is different, Dorcas, at least for the present. You know me--you know how I hate secrets; but this _is_ not mine--only in part--that is, I dare not tell it--but may be soon free--and to us all, dear Dorcas, a woful, _woful_, day will it be.'

'I made you a promise, Rachel,' said her beautiful cousin, gravely, and a little coldly and sadly, too; 'I will never break it again--it was thoughtless. Let us each try to forget that there is anything hidden between us.'

'If ever the time comes, dear Dorcas, when I may tell it to you, I don't know whether you will bless or hate me for having kept it so well; at all events, I think you'll pity me, and at last understand your miserable cousin.'

'I said before, Rachel, that I liked you. You are one of us, Rachel. You are beautiful, wayward, and daring, and one way or another, misfortune always waylays us; and I have, I know it, calamity before me. Death comes to other women in its accustomed way; but we have a double death. There is not a beautiful portrait in Brandon that has not a sad and true story.

Early death of the frail and fair tenement of clay--but a still earlier death of happiness. Come, Rachel, shall we escape from the spell and the destiny into solitude? What do you think of my old plan of the valleys and lakes of Wales? a pretty foreign tongue spoken round us, and no one but ourselves to commune with, and books, and music. It is not, Radie, altogether jest. I sometimes yearn for it, as they say foreign girls do for convent life.'

'Poor Dorcas,' said Rachel, very softly, fixing her eyes upon her with a look of inexpressible sadness and pity.

'Rachel,' said Dorcas, 'I am a changeable being--violent, self-willed. My fate may be quite a different one from that which _I_ suppose or _you_ imagine. I may yet have to retract _my_ secret.'

'Oh! would it were so--would to Heaven it were so.'

'Suppose, Rachel, that I had been deceiving you--perhaps deceiving myself--time will show.'

There was a wild smile on beautiful Dorcas's face as she said this, which faded soon into the proud serenity that was its usual character.

'Oh! Dorcas, if your good angel is near, listen to his warnings.'

'We have no good angels, my poor Rachel: what modern necromancers, conversing with tables, call "mocking spirits," have always usurped their place with us: singing in our drowsy ears, like Ariel--visiting our reveries like angels of light--being really our evil genii--ah, yes!'

'Dorcas, dear,' said Rachel, after both had been silent for a time, speaking suddenly, and with a look of pale and keen entreaty--'Beware of Stanley--oh! beware, beware. I think I am beginning to grow afraid of him myself.'

Dorcas was not given to sighing--but she sighed--gazing sadly across the wide, bleak moor, with her proud, apathetic look, which seemed pa.s.sively to defy futurity--and then, for awhile, they were silent.

She turned, and caressingly smoothed the golden tresses over Rachel's frank, white forehead, and kissed them as she did so.

'You are better, darling; you are rested?' she said.

'Yes, dear Dorcas,' and she kissed the slender hand that smoothed her hair.

Each understood that the conversation on that theme was ended, and somehow each was relieved.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

SIR JULIUS HOCKLEY'S LETTER.

Jos. Larkin mentioned in his conversation with the vicar, just related, that he had received a power of attorney from Mark Wylder. Connected with this doc.u.ment there came to light a circ.u.mstance so very odd, that the reader must at once be apprised of it.

This legal instrument was attested by two witnesses, and bore date about a week before the interview, just related, between the vicar and Mr.

Larkin. Here, then, was a fact established. Mark Wylder had returned from Boulogne, for the power of attorney had been executed at Brighton. Who were the witnesses? One was Thomas Tupton, of the Travellers' Hotel, Brighton.

This Thomas Tupton was something of a sporting celebrity, and a likely man enough to be of Mark's acquaintance.

The other witness was Sir Julius Hockley, of Hockley, an unexceptionable evidence, though a good deal on the turf.

Now our friend Jos. Larkin had something of the Red Indian's faculty for tracking his game, by hardly perceptible signs and tokens, through the wilderness; and this mystery of Mark Wylder's flight and seclusion was the present object of his keen and patient pursuit.

On receipt of the 'instrument,' therefore, he wrote by return of post, 'presenting his respectful compliments to Sir Julius Hockley, and deeply regretting that, as solicitor of the Wylder family, and the _gentleman_ (_sic_) empowered to act under the letter of attorney, it was imperative upon him to trouble him (Sir Julius H.) with a few interrogatories, which he trusted he would have no difficulty in answering.'