"You are talking too much," says Mona, nervously.
"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 ironical? 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 hatred 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 vault?" He seems to feel some anxiety on this point.
"Whatever you wish shall be done," says Mona earnestly, knowing she can induce Nicholas to accede to any request of hers.
"Are you sure?" asks he, his face brightening. "Remember how they have drawn 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," murmurs 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 sob. "There is no comfort in the tomb: there our dust may mingle, 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," entreats she, piteously. "Try to pray: there is always mercy."