"Shall I write to her?" asks Mona, gently. "Say what you wish done."
"It would be kind of you," says he, gratefully. "She will want to know all, and you will do it more tenderly than the others. Do not dwell upon my sins; and say I died—happy. Let her too have a copy of the paper Dr. Bland has now."
"I shall remember," says Mona, not knowing what the paper contains. "And who am I, that I should dwell upon the sins of another? Are you tired, Paul? How fearfully pale you are looking!"
He is evidently quite exhausted. His brow is moist, his eyes are sunken, his lips more pallid, more death-like than they were before. In little painful gasps his breath comes fitfully. Then all at once it occurs to Mona that though he is looking at her he does not see her. His mind has wandered far away to those earlier days when England was unknown and when the free life of the colony was all he desired.
As Mona gazes at him half fearfully, he raises himself suddenly on his elbow, and says, in a tone far stronger than he has yet used,—
"How brilliant the moonlight is to-night! See—watch"—eagerly—"how the shadows chase each other down the Ranger's Hill!"
Mona looks up startled. The faint rays of the new-born moon are indeed rushing through the casement, and are flinging themselves languidly upon the opposite wall, but they are pale and wan, as moonlight is in its infancy, and anything but brilliant. Besides, Rodney's eyes are turned not on them, but on the door that can be seen just over Mona's head, where no beams disport themselves, however weakly.
"Lie down: you will hurt yourself again," she says, trying gently to induce him to return to his former recumbent position; but he resists her.
"Who has taken my orders about the sheep?" he says, in a loud voice, and in an imperious tone, his eyes growing bright but uncertain. "Tell Grainger to see to it. My father spoke about it again only yesterday. The upper pastures are fresher—greener——"
His voice breaks: with a groan he sinks back again upon his pillow.