Know her? In the Valley of the Shadow what other Angel could there be so faithful or so tender! He sighed, leaning heavily against her bosom.
"Yes, dear—I know you!" he gasped, faintly. "But—I am very ill—dying, I think! Open the window—give me air!"
She laid his head gently back on the pillow, and ran quickly to throw open the lattice. In that same moment, the dog Charlie, who had followed her downstairs from her room, jumped on the bed, and finding his master's hand lying limp and pallid outside the coverlet, fawned upon it with a plaintive cry. The cool sea-air rushed in, and Helmsley's sinking strength revived. He turned his eyes gratefully towards the stream of silvery moonlight that poured through the open casement.
"'Angels ever bright and fair!'" he murmured—then as Mary came back to his side, he smiled vaguely; "I thought I heard my little sister singing!"
Slipping her arm again under his head, she carefully administered a dose of the cordial which had been made up for him as a calmative against his sudden heart attacks.
He swallowed it slowly and with difficulty.
"I'm—I'm all right," he said, feebly. "The pain has gone. I'm sorry to have wakened you up, Mary!—but you're always kind and patient——"
His voice broke—and a grey pallor began to steal almost imperceptibly upwards over his wasted features. She watched him, her heart beating fast with grief and terror,—the tears rushing to her eyes in spite of her efforts to restrain them. For she saw that he was dying. The solemnly musical plash of the sea sounded rhythmically upon the quiet air like the soothing murmur of a loving mother's lullaby, and the radiance of the moonlight flooded the little room with mystical glory. In her womanly tenderness she drew him more protectingly into the embrace of her kind arm, as though seeking to hold him back from the abyss of the Unknown, and held his head close against her breast. He opened his eyes and saw her thus bending over him. A smile brightened his face—a smile of youth, and hope, and confidence.
"The end is near, Mary!" he said in a clear, calm voice; "but—it's not difficult! There is no pain. And you are with me. That is enough!—that is more than I ever hoped for!—more than I deserve! God bless you always!"
He shut his eyes again—but opened them quickly in a sudden struggle for breath.