Over one high bank, across a stile, through another broken gap, on to a wall, straight and broad, up which Rodney pulls her, carefully taking her down in his arms at the other side.
Still onward,—lightly, swiftly: now in sight of the boundless sea, now diving down into the plain, without faintness or despondency, or any other feeling but a passionate determination to save a man's life.
Rodney's breath is coming more quickly, and he is conscious of a desire to stop and pull himself together—if only for a minute—before bracing himself for a second effort. But to Mona, with her fresh and perfect health, and lithe and lissom body, and all the rich young blood that surges upward in her veins, excitement serves but to make her more elastic; and with her mind strung to its highest pitch, and her hot Irish blood aflame, she runs easily onward, until at length the road is reached that is her goal.
Springing upon the bank that skirts the road on one side, she raises her hands to her head, and listens with all her might for the sound of wheels in the distance.
But all is still.
Oh, if they should be too late! If Maxwell has passed and gone down the other road, and is perhaps now already "done to death" by the cruel treacherous enemy that lieth in wait for him!
Her blood heated by her swift run grows cold again as this thought comes to her,—forced to the front by the fact that "all the air a solemn stillness holds," and that no sound makes itself heard save the faint sighing of the night-wind in the woods up yonder, and the "lone and melancholy voice" of the sea, a mile away, as it breaks upon the silent shore.
These sounds, vague and harmonious as they are, yet full of mystery and unexplained sadness, but serve to heighten the fear that chills her heart.
Rodney, standing beside her, watches her anxiously. She throws up her head, and pushes back her hair, and strains her eyes eagerly into the darkness, that not all the moonbeams can make less than night.
Alas! alas! what foul deed may even now be doing while she stands here powerless to avert it,—her efforts all in vain! How richly shines the sweet heaven, studded with its stars! how cool, how fragrant, is the breeze! How the tiny wavelets move and sparkle in the glorious bay below. How fair a world it is to hold such depths of sin! Why should not rain and storms and howling tempest mark a night so——