"Oh, not yet!" entreats faithful Mona, in a miserable tone; "not yet. Remember what I said. I promised to remain with him until the very end."
"You have kept your promise," returns he, solemnly, pressing her face still closer against his chest.
A strong shudder runs through her frame; she grows a little heavier in his embrace. Seeing she has fainted, he lifts her in his arms and carries her out of the room.
Later on, when they open the paper that had been given by the dead man into the keeping of Dr. Bland, and which proves to be his will, duly signed and witnessed by the gamekeeper and his son, they find he has left to Mona all of which he died possessed. It amounts to about two thousand a year; of which one thousand is to come to her at once, the other on the death of his mother.
To Ridgway, the under-gardener, he willed three hundred pounds, "as some small compensation for the evil done to him," so runs the document, written in a distinct but trembling hand. And then follow one or two bequests to those friends he had left in Australia and some to the few from whom he had received kindness in colder England.
No one is forgotten by him; though once "he is dead and laid in grave" he is forgotten by most.
They put him to rest in the family vault, where his ancestors lie side by side,—as Mona promised him,—and write Sir Paul Rodney over his head, giving him in death the title they would gladly have withheld from him in life.