"She gave her life to save that of the man she loved," said Mannering. "Her mother, long years since, did the same in my case. She is her true daughter. It was her fate, and could not be evaded. She had the foreknowledge, of which she spoke to me more than once."
Roland Massinger, on the way to recovery, but too weak for independent action, still lay in the military hospital.
Mannering, as he stood beside his couch, and gazed on his wasted features, looked, with his vast form and foreign air, like some fabled genie of the Arabian tale.
"She is gone," said the sick man, as he raised himself and held out the trembling fingers, which feebly grasped the iron hand of his visitor—"she is gone; she died in shielding me. I feel ashamed to be alive. I cannot ask your pardon. I was the cause of her death."
The rigid features of the father relaxed, as he watched the grief-worn countenance of the younger man, and noted the sincerity and depth of his despairing words.
"My boy," he said, "you have played your part nobly, as did she; and you have, by a hair's breadth, escaped being buried beside her this day. She died for the man she loved, as only a daughter of her race can love. There must be no feeling but affection and respect between us. I mourned her mother as do you her daughter. Poor darling Erena! Oh, my child—my child!"
Mannering's freedom from ordinary human weakness deserted him here. He threw himself on his knees by the side of Massinger's bed, who then witnessed a sight unseen before by living eyes—the strong man's tears as he abandoned himself to unrestrained grief. Sobs and muffled cries, groans and lamentations of terrible intensity, shook his powerful frame. Weakened by his wound, and compelled to thus relieve his intolerable anguish, Roland Massinger's tears flowed fast in unison, as for a brief interval they mingled their sorrow. Then raising himself, and regaining the impassive expression which his features, save in familiar converse, ordinarily wore, the war-chief of the Ngapuhi bade adieu to the man whom he had looked forward to acknowledging with pride as the husband of the darling of his heart, the idol of his latter years.
"Fate has willed it otherwise," he said. "You may have happy years before you in your own land, with perhaps a wife and children to perpetuate your name and inherit your lands. I wish you such happiness as I know she would have done. Her generous heart would so will it, if she could speak its promptings from 'the undiscovered country.' In her name, and with her authority, knowing her inmost thoughts, I say—May God bless you and prosper you in the future path! In this life we shall meet no more."