WYLDER'S HAJVD.
141
and balmy. It was escape flight from Gylingden — flight
from Brandon — flight from Redman's Farm: they
and all their hated associations would be far behind,
and that awful page in her story, not torn out, in-
deed, but gummed down as it were, and no longer
glaring and glowering in her eyes every moment of her
waking life.
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 be-
neath the horizon; and you could, from its darkened win-
dow, see its red beams still tinting the high grounds of
Willerston, visible through the stems of the old trees that
were massed in the near foregronnd.
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 not
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