On a low bed, with his eyes fastened eagerly upon the door, lies Paul Rodney, the dews of death already on his face.  
There is no disfigurement about him to be seen, no stain of blood, no ugly mark; yet he is touched by the pale hand of the destroyer, and is sinking, dying, beneath it. He has at least ten years within the last fatal hour, while in his eyes lies an expression so full of hungry and keen as amounts almost to .
 
As Mona advances to his side, through the gloom of fast approaching night, pale almost as he is, and trembling in every limb, this anxiety dies out of his face, leaving behind it a rest and peace unutterable.
 
To her it is an awful moment. Never before has she stood face to face with dissolution, to wait for the snapping of the chain,—the breaking of the bowl. "Neither the sun nor death," says La Rochefoucauld, "can be looked at ;" and now "Death's thousand doors stand open" to receive this man that but an hour agone was full of life as she is now. His pulses , his blood coursed lightly through his , the grave seemed a far-off destination; yet here he lies, to the earth, beaten down and trodden under, with nothing further to anticipate but the last change of all.
 
"O Death! thou strange, mysterious power, seen every day yet never understood but by the incommunicative dead, what art thou?"
 
"You have come," he says, with a quick sigh that be speaks relief. "I knew you would. I felt it; yet I feared. Oh, what comfort to see you again!"
 
Mona tries to say something,—anything that will be kind and sympathetic,—but words fail her. Her lips part, but no sound escapes them. The terrible reality of the moment terrifies and overcomes her.
 
"Do not try to make me any commonplace speeches," says Rodney, marking her . He speaks hastily, yet with evident difficulty. "I am dying. Nothing, can alter that. But death has brought you to my side again, so I cannot repine."
 
"But to find you like this"—begins Mona. And then overcome by grief and , she covers her face with her hands, and bursts into tears.
 
"Mona! Are you crying for me?" says Paul Rodney, as though surprised. "Do not. Your tears hurt me more than this wound that has done me to death."
 
"Oh, if I had not given you that pistol," Mona, who cannot conquer the horror of the thought that she has helped him to his death, "you would be alive and strong now."
 
"Yes,—and miserable! you forget to add that. Now everything seems squared. In the grave neither grief nor revenge can find a place. And as for you, what have you to do with my fate?—nothing. What should you not return to me my own? and why should I not die by the weapon I had dared to level against yourself? There is a justice in it that of Sadlers' Wells."
 
He actually laughs, though faintly, and Mona looks up. Perhaps he has forced himself to this vague touch of merriment (that is even sadder than tears) just to please and rouse her from her despondency,—because the laugh dies almost as it is born, and an additional pallor covers his lips in its stead.
 
"Listen to me," he goes on, in a lower key, and with some slight signs of . "I am glad to die,—unfeignedly glad: therefore rejoice with me! Why should you waste a tear on such as I am? Do you remember how I told you (barely two hours ago) that my life had come to an end where other fellows hope to begin theirs? I hardly knew myself how prophetic my words would prove."
 
"It is terrible, terrible," says Mona, piteously sinking on her knees beside the bed. One of his hands is lying outside the coverlet, and, with a gesture full of tender regret, she lays her own upon it.
 
"Are you in pain?" she says, in a low, fearful tone. "Do you suffer much?"
 
"I suffer nothing: I have no pain now. I am inexpressibly, happy," replies he, with a smile radiant, though languid. Forgetful of his unfortunate state, he raises his other hand, and, bringing it across the bed, tries to place it on Mona's. But the action is too much for him. His face takes a leaden , more ghastly than its former pallor, and, in spite of an heroic effort to suppress it, a deep escapes him.
 
"Ah!" says Mona, springing to her feet, and turning to the door, as though to summon aid; but he stops her by a gesture.
 
"No, it is nothing. It will be over in a moment," he. "Give me some brandy, and help me to cheat Death of his for a little time, if it be possible."
 
Seeing brandy, on a table near, she pours a little into a glass with a shaking hand, and passing her arm beneath his neck, holds it to his lips.
 
It revives him somewhat. And presently the intenser pallor dies away, and speech returns to him.
 
"Do not call for assistance," he whispers, . "They can do me no good. Stay with me. Do not me. Swear you will remain with me to—to the end."
 
"I promise you faithfully," says Mona.
 
"It is too much to ask, but I being alone," he goes on, with a quick of fear and repulsion. "It is a dark and terrible journey to take, with no one near who loves one, with no one to feel a single regret when one has departed."
 
"I shall feel regret," says, Mona, brokenly, the tears running down her cheeks.
 
"Give me your hand again," says Rodney, after a pause; and when she gives it to him he says, "Do you know this is the nearest approach to real happiness I have ever known in all my careless, useless life? What is it Shakspeare says about the of loving 'a bright particular star'? I always think of you when that line comes to my mind. You are the star; mine is the folly."
 
He smiles again, but Mona is too sad to smile in return.
 
"How did it happen?" she asks, presently.
 
"I don't know myself. I wandered in a fashion through the wood on leaving you, not caring to return home just then, and I was thinking of—of you, of course—when I stumbled against something (they tell me it was a gnarled root that had thrust itself above ground), and then there was a report, and a sharp ; and that was all. I remember nothing. The gamekeeper found me a few minutes later, and had me brought here."
 
"You are talking too much," says Mona, .
 
"I may as well talk while I can: soon you will not be able to hear me, when the grass is growing over me," replies he, recklessly. "It was hardly worth my while to deliver you up that will, was it? Is not Fate ? Now it is all as it was before I came upon the scene, and Nicholas has the title without dispute. I wish we had been better friends,—he at least was civil to me,—but I was reared with in my heart towards all the Rodneys; I was taught to despise and fear them as my natural enemies, from my cradle."
 
Then, after a pause, "Where will they bury me?" he asks, suddenly. "Do you think they will put me in the family ?" He seems to feel some anxiety on this point.
 
"Whatever you wish shall be done," says Mona earnestly, knowing she can induce Nicholas to to any request of hers.
 
"Are you sure?" asks he, his face brightening. "Remember how they have back from me. I was their own first-cousin,—the son of their father's brother,—yet they treated me as the veriest outcast."
 
Then Mona says, in a trembling voice and rather disconnectedly, because of her emotion, "Be quite sure you shall be—buried—where all the other baronets of Rodney lie at rest."
 
"Thank you," he, gratefully. There is evidently comfort in the thought. Then after a moment or two he goes on again, as though following out a pleasant idea: "Some day, perhaps, that vault will hold you too; and there at least we shall meet again, and be side by side."
 
"I wish you would not talk of being buried," says Mona, with a . "There is no comfort in the tomb: there our dust may , but in heaven our souls shall meet, I trust,—I hope."
 
"Heaven," repeats he, with a sigh. "I have forgotten to think of heaven."
 
"Think of it now, Paul,—now before it is too late," she, piteously. "Try to pray: there is always mercy."
 
"Pray for me!" says he, in a low tone, pressing her hand. So on her knees, in a voice, sad but earnest, she repeats what prayers she can remember out of the grand Service that belongs to us. One or two sentences from the Litany come to her; and then some words rise from her own heart, and she puts up a to heaven that the passing soul beside her, however , may reach some where rest remaineth!
 
Some time elapses before he speaks again, and Mona is almost hoping he may have fallen into a quiet , when he opens his eyes and says, regretfully,—
 
"What a different life mine might have been had I known you earlier!" Then, with a faint flush, that vanishes almost as it comes, as though without power to stay, he says, "Did your husband object to your coming here?"
 
"Geoffrey? Oh, no. It was he who brought me. He bade me hasten lest you should even imagine me careless about coming. And—and—he desired me to say h............