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 parched lips.
It revives him somewhat. And presently the intenser pallor dies away, and speech returns to him.
"Do not call for assistance," he whispers, imploringly. "They can do me no good. Stay with me. Do not forsake 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 dread being alone," he goes on, with a quick shudder 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 folly 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 desultory 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 pang; and that was all. I remember nothing. The gamekeeper found me a few minutes later, and had me brought here."