'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 associations 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.