The throb of life beat stronger than Davis had anticipated. A wonderful constitution that could so hold out against the ravages of disease! The breathing was laboured, but there was vigour enough left to last out the long night hours—to last for days and nights yet, the medico thought, as he left the room.
The valet was moving the candles from the table by the bed, when his master stopped him.
"Leave them there: I want to see my wife's face," he said.
The man obeyed, and followed the apothecary.
Husband and wife were alone.
"On your knees, Tonia—so, with your face towards the light," Kilrush said eagerly. "So, so, love. I want to see your eyes. You are my wife, Tonia, my wife for ever—in life and after life. This perishing clay will be hidden from your sight to-morrow—this Kilrush will cease to be—but—" striking his breast passionately, "there is something here that will live—the mind of the man who loved you—and who dies despairing—the martyr of his insensate pride."
He grasped her hands in both his own, looking into her eyes with a wild intensity that touched the boundary line of madness; but she did not shrink from him. That wasted countenance, leaden with the dull shadow of death, was for her the dearest thing on earth, the only thing she was conscious of in this last hour.
"Tonia, do you understand?" he gasped, struggling to recover breath. "I have married you to make you mine beyond the grave. It would be the agony of hell to die and leave you to another. You are mine by this bond. I have given you all a dying lover can give—my name, my fortune. Swear that you will be true to me, that you will never give yourself to another man. That you will be my wife—mine only—till the grave unites us, and that you will lie by my side when life is done, the vault by the Shannon your only wedding bed. Promise me never to bless another with your love."
"Never, never, never, upon my honour," she said, with a depth of earnestness that satisfied him.
"On your honour—yes, for your honour means something. If the spirits of the dead are free, I shall be near you. If you break your promise, I shall haunt you—an angry ghost, pitiless, cruel. As you hope for peace, do not cheat me."