Having said all this without a break, Jenkins feels he has outdone himself, and retires on his laurels.
Nicholas, going into the outer hall, cross-examines the boy who has brought the melancholy tidings, and, having spoken to him for some time, goes back to the library with a face even graver than it was before.
"The poor fellow is calling for you, Mona, incessantly," he says. "It remains with you to decide whether you will go to him or not. Geoffrey, you should have a voice in this matter, and I think she ought to go."
"Oh, Mona, do go—do," entreats Doatie, who is in tears. "Poor, poor fellow! I wish now I had not been so rude to him."
"Geoffrey, will you take me to him?" says Mona, rousing herself.
"Yes. Hurry, darling. If you think you can bear it, you should lose no time. Minutes even, I fear, are precious in this case."
Then some one puts on her again the coat she had taken off such a short time since, and some one else puts on her sealskin cap and twists her black lace round her white throat, and then she turns to go on her sad mission. All their joy is turned to mourning, their laughter to tears.
Nicholas, who had left the room again, returns now, bringing with him a glass of wine, which he compels her to swallow, and then, pale and frightened, but calmer than she was before, she leaves the house, and starts with Geoffrey for the gamekeeper's lodge, where lies the man they had so dreaded, impotent in the arms of death.
Night is creeping up over the land. Already in the heavens the pale crescent moon just born rides silently,—
"Wi' the auld moon in hir arme,"