"Mother must be dead," panted Cecil, as they hurried along; "else had she surely followed me."
A deadly fear struck on Neville's heart, cold as a hailstone on an opening rose. Had he so nearly reached the goal to fail at last?
"Look!" cried Cecil. "There she is!"
Neville dropped the child's hand and rushed forward to where Elinor lay stretched, corpse-like, upon the ground, Margaret Brent chafing her cold hands. He fell upon his knees beside her and rained hot kisses on the cold fingers.
"O Death," he muttered, "you must not, shall not cheat me now! Not till she knows. Oh, not till then!"
"This is not death," said Margaret Brent, "but a heavy swoon. Hast thou brandy?"
For answer Neville pulled his flask from his jerkin, poured out some of the liquid and forced it between Elinor's lips, while Margaret ran to the Governor's Spring for water, taking Cecil with her to help carry the ewer.
Left alone thus with the woman he loved, the only woman he had ever loved, Neville knelt on, and watched and waited,—waited as it seemed to him for hours, though in reality it was but minutes, to catch the first flicker of those white lids, the first tremulous movement of those chiselled nostrils.
Two minds there were within him: one intent upon that still form, gazing in an agony of terror upon its immobility; the other living over the past,—that past which for him began and ended with Elinor.