270
WYLDER'S HAJVD.
together, up and down the short yew walk, in which Lake
looked so cold and angry, and Rachel so earnest. What
was this secret? How dared her husband mask from her
what he confided to another? How dared Rachel confer
with him — influence him, perhaps, under her very eye,
walking before the windows of Brandon — that Brandon
which was hers, and to which she had taken Stanley,
passing her gate a poor and tired wayfarer of the world,
and made him — what? Oh, mad caprice! Oh, fit
retribution!
A wild voice was talking this way, to-and-fro, and up
and down, in the chambers of memory. But she would
not let it speak from her proud lips. She smiled, and to
outward seeming, was the same; but Rachel felt that the
fashion of her countenance towards her was changed.
Since her marriage she had not hinted to Rachel the
subject of their old conversation: burning beneath her
feeling about it was now a deep-rooted anger and jealousy.
Still she was Stanley's sister, and to be treated accordingly.
The whole household greeted her with proper respect, and
Dorcas met her graciously, and with all the externals of
kindness. The change was so little, that I do not think
any but she and Rachel saw it; and yet it was immense.
There was a dark room, a sort of ante-room, to the
library, with only two tall and narrow windows, and hung
with old Dutch tapestries, representing the battles and
sieges of men in periwigs, pikemen, dragoons in buff coats,
and musketeers with matchlocks — all the grim faces of
soldiers, generals. drummers, grown pale and dusky by
time, like armies of ghosts.
Rachel had come one morning to see Dorcas, and,
awaiting her appearance, sat down in this room. The
door of the library opened, and she was a little surprised
to see Stanley enter.