Rachel had opened her window-shutters, as was her wont when the moon was up, and with her small white hands on the window-sash, looked into the wooded solitudes, lost in haunted darkness in every direction but one, and there massed in vaporous and discoloured foliage, hardly more distinct, or less solemn.
'Poor old Tamar says her prayers, and reads her Bible; I wish _I_ could. How often I wish it. That good, simple vicar--how unlike his brother--is wiser, perhaps, than all the shrewd people that smile at him. He used to talk to me; but I've lost that--yes--I let him understand I did not care for it, and so that good influence is gone from me--graceless creature. No one seemed to care, except poor old Tamar, whether I ever said a prayer, or heard any good thing; and when I was no more than ten years old, I refused to say my prayers for her. My poor father. Well, Heaven help us all.'
So she stood in the same sad attitude, looking out upon the shadowy scene, in a forlorn reverie.
Her interview with Dorcas remained on her memory like an odd, clear, half-horrible dream. What a dazzling prospect it opened for Stanley; what a dreadful one might it not prepare for Dorcas. What might not arise from such a situation between Stanley and Mark Wylder, each in his way a worthy representative of the ill-conditioned and terrible race whose blood he inherited? Was this doomed house of Brandon never to know repose or fraternity?
Was it credible? Had it actually occurred, that strange confession of Dorcas Brandon's? Could anything be imagined so mad--so unaccountable? She reviewed Stanley in her mind's eye. She was better acquainted, perhaps, with his defects than his fascinations, and too familiar with both to appreciate at all their effect upon a stranger.
'What can she see in him? There's nothing remarkable in Stanley, poor fellow, except his faults. There are much handsomer men than he, and many as amusing--and he with no estate.'
She had heard of charms and philtres. How could she account for this desperate hallucination?
Rachel was troubled by a sort of fear to-night, and the low fever of an undefined expectation was upon her. She turned from the window, intending to write two letters, which she had owed too long--young ladies' letters--for Miss Lake, like many of her sex, as I am told, had several little correspondences on her hands; and as she turned, with a start, she saw old Tamar standing in the door-way, looking at her.