And the wan oracle having spoken, she sate down in the same sort of abstraction again beside Dorcas, and she looked full in her cousin's eyes.
'I made you a voluntary promise, Dorcas, and now you will make me one. Of Mark Wylder I say this: his name has been for years hateful to me, and recently it has become frightful; and you will promise me simply this, that you will never ask me to speak again about him. Be he near, or be he far, I regard his very name with horror.'
Dorcas returned her gaze with one of haughty amazement; and Rachel said,
'Well, Dorcas, you promise?'
'You speak truly, Rachel, you have a right to my promise: I give it.'
'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.